Sunday 12th September – 2pm KO – FA Women’s Championship

Welcome to The Dripping Pan for today’s FA Women’s Championship game with London City Lionesses. Here is your complimentary e-programme.

SIMON SAYS

Training’s been good this week. We’ve been working on a few things, obviously we’re a little bit disappointed after the game against Bristol. So, it’s been opportunistic for us to look at that.

London City are flying at the moment they’re doing well. They had really good recruitment, they’ve brought in some really good players and obviously we know Molly. Two wins from two for them against tough teams in Palace and Liverpool so they are going to be full of confidence we know they’re going to be a really tough side. We know it’ll be tough, but we know how tough it is for teams to come to the Dripping Pan so hopefully we can put on a good performance and get a positive result.

We’ve addressed a few of the issues that we had. We weren’t that bad in the first half, obviously things can be better, the second half was very disappointing from that side of things. We’ve reflected, we’ve gone over a few things, the players have as well and we’re looking to improve week-by-week.

There’s a lot of new players and we’re still trying to get to know each other, to get the balance right so that thing’s are gelling. It’s nice that we’ve got a few players back, players like Lucy finally back from injury, she was in the squad last week and has had another week to train. So, the squad’s looking in a better place than it was, and it will continue to do so. Will there be changes? We’ll have to wait and see on Sunday!

It’s massive [to be back at the Pan], we had that pre-season game against West Ham here and that had some fans in, and just, the noise they generate, the support we had, it’s massive and can definitely help. We missed it last season and we’re really grateful to have them back so, hopefully they enjoy the day and help us out!

NOTES FROM THE BIG CHAIR

Good afternoon and after what seems like an age, I can once again welcome you all to The Dripping Pan to see our Women’s team play an actual league match!  I’d like to welcome our visitors from Dartford this afternoon and hope your journey to and from East Sussex was as smooth as possible.

Right, we need to remember how to do this supporting thing again.  I’m sure you’ll soon get back into the swing of things and get behind The Rooks this afternoon.  London City Lionesses have won both games so far, including the impressive victory away at Liverpool.  Unfortunately, our start to the season was hampered by a Covid “incident” within the Charlton Athletic squad and so we travelled to Bristol City last week already having to play catch up.

There’s a lot of new faces in the squad who I know you’ll get to know over the coming weeks and just like with our Men’s squad, it takes time to gel.  Training together is one thing, but there’s no substitute for competitive match experience in bringing all the elements you work on together.  Pre-season preparation was good, cumulating in the 2-2 draw against Super League West Ham but that counts for nothing once the real competitive action starts.

It is doubly frustrating that after today we have another blank weekend.  One of the lessons I had hoped the FA has learnt from the last two seasons of disrupted football is to work on the fixture calendar and eliminate this stop/start  situation with fixtures.  It’s frustrating for players, for managers, for clubs and for the fans.  The added complexity, as we saw earlier this week in the Brazil vs Argentina Men’s game, is knowing which players can travel to where, and more importantly return, without having to self-isolate.  Trying to get our head around that is difficult enough.

It has been great to see some of the Super League sides playing at the club’s “main stadium” in the past few weeks – Goodison Park has hosted Everton, The Emirates has hosted Arsenal and Leicester City will play “some” games at the Kingpower.  But surely the clubs should only have one stadium?  Why is there delight that Arsenal have allowed their women’s side to play at the Emirates?  That should be the de facto position – same club, same rules why not same stadium?  In the case of Leicester City, the club have said that matches may also be played at Burton Albion’s Pirelli stadium – that is in a different county and a 80 mile round trip!

We need to get out of a mindset that clubs are doing their Women’s sides a favour by “allowing them” to play at the Men’s stadium.  We need to bring normality to the fact they are the same club, with the same kit, same structure AND share the same facilities, otherwise how do we expect the Women’s game to grow?

Anyway, rant over for this week.  Enjoy the game and Come On You Rooks!

Stuart

TEAMSHEETS

LIVESTREAM AVAILABLE HERE

Lewes vs West Ham, 2-2, pre-season friendly. Images by James Boyes.

Previous game:

LEWES SQUAD LIST

Manager: Simon Parker

1 Tatiana Saunders (GK)

32 Shanell Salgado (GK)

2 Ellie Mason

3 Rhian Cleverly

4 Amelia Hazard

5 Nicola Cousins

6 Ellie Hack

7 Lucy Ashworth-Clifford

8 Ellie Noble

9 Georgia Timms

10 Freda Ayisi

11 Heidi Logan

12 Charley Boswell

14 Paula Howells

15 Ini Umotong

18 Rebecca Mckenna

19 Kallie Balfour

20 Sophie O’rourke

23 Izzy Dalton

27 Zoe Cross

34 Lara Miller

LONDON CITY LIONESSES SQUAD LIST

Head Coach: Melissa Phillips

18 Anna Pedersen

2 Grace Lilly Neville

3 Melis Mehmet

4 Charlotte Fleming

5 Hannah Short

6 Carly Girasoli

7 Alli Murphy

8 Amy Rodgers

9 Rianna Jarrett

10 Lily Agg

11 Jamie-Lee Napier

12 Mollie Rouse

14 Harley Bennett

15 Hayley Nolan

16 Karin Muya

17 Lucy Fitzgerald

19 Wiktoria Fronc

20 Atlanta Primus

21 Annie-lee Rossiter

23 Lilly Pursey

28 Brooke Nunn

30 Shae Yanez

N/A Jess Gray

Next Match: SUNDERLAND (AWAY) SUNDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER

Drummers and Mascots at today’s game…

The mascots for today’s game will be from our Lewes FC Juniors u8s, u9s, u10s and u11s girls teams!

The drummers at the Pan today will be the group Earthquake. Their mission is to, “bring Mayhem and Madness to the masses. Well, Sussex to start off with!”

Architect of Calm exhibits in The Rook Inn at Lewes FC for Artwave

Lewes’ annual Artwave show is coming up again, running from September 11^th to 26^th in various locations around the town and district. And this year, that includes the Rook Inn bar at Lewes FC’s Dripping Pan ground.

Vets footballer and architectural designer Scott Currie is showing off his artistic skill in the clubhouse, bringing his exhibition ‘The Colours of Equality’ to the Pan.

Scott Currie, founder of The Architecture of Calm, became interested in the Rooks after learning about Lewes FC’s ground-breaking equality initiative in 2017, whereby the club became the first in the world to assign equal playing budgets and resources to their men’s and women’s teams. As an ex-player himself (Newhaven FC), now with a small daughter who loves a kickabout and fervently supports Lewes FC’s women’s team, Scott decided to sponsor a match through his architecture business.

‘Not only did I sponsor the match, aligning with a very impressive, progressive set-up, but I also signed up to play with Lewes Men’s Vets – the over-35s team who train at the 3G pitch. Honestly, I’d describe playing with the Vets as ‘life-giving’ – my love of the beautiful game has been reignited. I’m so grateful to Lewes FC for that, and delighted to be showing my art at The Dripping Pan for this year’s Artwave’. I called the exhibition ‘The Colours of Equality’ because I love that this football club has reset the narrative around gender in football.

‘The club’s highlighting of the issue led to my exploration of what equality means generally, and how it may be represented visually. I thought about which colours were associated with the club and The Dripping Pan itself, and revisited – and even repurposed – previous work I’ve done sparked by movements like BLM. I sat with my work, and the longer I sat the more the meaning became clear’

‘Colours and form are important to me, as is the idea of place. As a designer of architecture, and as an artist, there’s an ever-present struggle to produce work that I find important. Maybe that’s why I keep creating – I’m sort of striving for something that doesn’t yet exist. I hope that visitors to The Rook Inn will see something of that process in the work’

Club director Karen Dobres commented, ‘Scott’s work will look beautiful on the walls of the Rook Inn and fans will enjoy the art as they down their Harvey’s or Prosecco. We’re grateful to Scott for choosing to exhibit here and hope to attract some new visitors to the ground during Lewes Artwave – as a community-owned club we love welcoming people in and showing them around!’

Artwave Festival runs from 11^th through 26^th September. The Rook Inn will be open during Artwave every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between 12 noon and 10pm with free entry except when matches are being played. Matches are Saturday 11^th September between 1pm and 5pm, Sunday 12^th September between 12noon and 4pm, Saturday 25^th September between 1pm and 5pm.

Scott Currie’s paintings are resin on canvas and acrylic on canvas.

BEA ON THE BALL – PAUL SHEPPARD

Not only is Paul part of the editorial team for this e-programme but during lockdown he has only gone and written a book about the club.

In the novel Bea is discovered by the club whilst managing some challenging circumstances, strong feelings and interesting characters.

Sheppard said, ‘I’ve been an owner of Lewes FC for some years now, and have always been a scribbler, mostly of short stories. This book was born out of lockdown, about a young footballer because football is in my blood. At first I was going to write about a boy, but then – thinking about Equality FC – I thought why not tell a new story, a different story? And since I couldn’t find any books about girls who played football in the bookshops, I decided I had to write ‘Bea on the Ball’.

Lewes director Karen Dobres said, ‘When Lewes FC began its equality campaign we hoped to start a movement and inspire people, so it’s brilliant to see ‘Bea on the Ball’ in bookshops! It’s a wonderful read, showing girls that there is a place for them in football too. And we all have a great stereotype-busting role model in Bea – she’s full of gutsy determination, on the ball on and off the pitch, and a character who really trusts herself.’

Bea on the Ball is available from all good book shops and online at £9.99, and also at The Dripping Pan in Lewes.

FILMING AT TODAY’S GAME

Today there may be film crews in the ground, filming on behalf of Lewes Football Club and other media organisations. The filming is usually for Lewes FC marketing purposes, to show what a match day looks/sounds like and to generally promote what we do. Lewes Football Club respectfully asks for your permission to be filmed. If you do not want to be filmed, please let the crew know directly and they will oblige.  Thanks for your cooperation in helping to build a successful club.

CREDITS AND LEGAL

“The FA Women’s Championship strongly supports recent FA statements that there should be a zero tolerance approach against racism and all forms of discrimination. Accordingly, any form of discriminatory abuse, whether it be based on race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, faith, age, ability or any other form of abuse will be reported to The Football Association for action by that Association. (The FA 0800 085 0508/Kick It Out 020 7253 0162).“

Lewes 2000 FC Limited. Registered in England and Wales with Company Registration Number 03790979. Lewes 2000 FC Limited is 100% owned by Lewes Community Football Club.

Honorary President Terry Parris
Chairman Stuart Fuller
Directors Sue Anstiss MBE (co-opted), Ed Briggs, Charlie Dobres, Karen Dobres, Stuart Fuller, John Peel, Ed Ramsden, Claire Rafferty (co-opted), Trevor Wells
Chief Executive Maggie Murphy
General Manager & COVID-19 Officer Lynne Burrell
Operations Manager James Barker
Commercial Manager Ini Umotong

Equality FC Campaign Manager Karen Dobres

Life Members
Mr and Mrs Brook, Vic Blunt, Pat Dartnell, Gary Elphick, Gordon Fowlie, Peter Hiscox RIP, Billy Nixon, Derrick Parris, Terry Parris, Jimmy Quinn, P. Swaysland, Steve Ibbitson, Jason Hopkinson, Steve White, Martin Elliot, Kevin Fingerneissl, Kevin Powell, David and Barbara Arnold, Roger and Cathy Feltham, Ethel Treagus, Roy Dartnell RIP, Ron Moore, Derek Southouse, Ray Smith, Ken Carter RIP

Manager Simon Parker
Assistant Coach Jesus Cordon
Assistant Coach Ady Penrose
PP Coach Christos Andreou
GK Coach John Macrae
Nutritionist Stefano Montanari
Asst PPC Kayleigh Bonwick
Physio Katrina Martin
Physiotherapist Paul Paredes
Team Psychologist Chelsea Orme
Data Analyst Adam Chilcott
Kitman Jessie Maes

Women’s DS Head Coach David Seymour
Women’s DS Assistant Coach Kavi Luchowa
U16 Girls Head Coach Carl Penfold
U16 Girls Assistant Coach Tim Heal
U14 Girls Head Coach Rob Palmer
U14 Girls Assistant Coach Tom Young

Pathway Co-ordinator Ryan Sullivan

Golden Rook Rob Read
Web Editor Stuart Fuller
Progcast Editors Stuart Fuller and Sam Simons
Club Photographer James Boyes

Next up at The Pan – Blackburn Rovers

SUNDAY 10th OCTOBER – 2PM

TICKETS ON SALE NOW