Sunday 5th February 2023 2:00pm – The Barclays Women’s Championship – The Dripping Pan
Welcome to The Dripping Pan for today’s Barclays Women’s Championship game against Birmingham City. Here is your complimentary e-programme
JOIN THE TEAM
NOTES FROM THE CHAIR
Good afternoon and welcome back to the Dripping Pan for this afternoon’s Barclays Women’s Championship against Birmingham City. I’d like to welcome the Blues to East Sussex for what I believe is their first ever visit here to us.
Last week we kept our nerve in what could have been a tricky FA Cup tie against a dangerous Ipswich Town side. I’ve known their manager, Joe Sheehan, for over a decade and he has a reputation for setting his sides up well so we knew that league position would go out the window. But thanks to Krafty’s goal we went into the hat for the 5th Round and have been rewarded with a home tie here in three weeks against Cardiff City.
There’s a real buzz around the club at the moment with both our senior sides in great form. Today’s a opportunity for us to make some progress up the table – it is still a very open campaign – the first time we have seen that for many-a-season, which is coming to make for an exciting last half of the season. Everyone can play their part in the push up the league – come to games, bring a friend or two and cheer on the team! We want to be the best supported team in the league – it makes a huge difference to have our fans cheering on the side.
As you will have seen elsewhere around the club and in the programme, today is Green Weekend and we are asking all of our fans to make a pledge to change at least one aspect of their every day lives to become a little bit more green!
Enjoy the game and Come On You Rooks!
Stuart
LEWES DRAW CARDIFF CITY IN FA CUP FIFTH ROUND!
We have been drawn at home to Cardiff City in the Fifth Round of the Vitality Women’s FA Cup.
The tie is scheduled to be played on Sunday 26 February as we look to progress to the Quarter-Final stage for the first time in our history!
From the dugout – Scott Booth
I think the business has been really good this window, we did need to strengthen the squad, we did look a bit thin at times.
It just meant that in the first-half of the season, a lot of players had to play the majority of the games.
It can get tough doing that a whole season, with the league as competitive as it is. The games we’ve got coming up it was important to strengthen and I’m pleased with what we did.
Managers always say more squad depth is a good problem to have, it is healthy to have competition and players understand that they have to be at the top of their game to play.
It also gives me options by playing different sides, different tactics, teams give you different problems and you’ve got to come up with a way of beating them. That might come through a different type of player.
That’s a great thing to have now but obviously it’s tough to leave players out. You don’t want players not picking up game-time.
But that’s the other side of having a very competitive squad, it’s healthy, it can only be good for the club.
We’ve got tough games coming up, really important ones, the players are really up for it. Especially without a league game in a while.
Birmingham will pose a threat in the same way that they did the first game we played them. It’ll be really tough.
We’re both sides that have come a long way since then, I think it will be a different game but competitive still, and we’re at the Pan so we’re confident.
The players are up for what they know themselves will be a tough match, but we’ve got quite a few big ones coming up which comes at a good time for us.
We understand as a group how important these league matches are, having come off the back of a bit of a journey with the cup competitions.
We know we’re better than what we showed against Ipswich, we’ve set higher standards than that, in terms of how we want to play.
I also have to say that generally speaking, the players have delivered this season. But when you have a dip in performance, you have to make sure you win.
The players obviously want to win every game, but they want to win it with a little bit of style as well.
We’ve gelled really well at the back, we’ve used a number of different permutations back there, despite the fact we’ve been short there at times.
They’ve done really well though and they have a strong mentality in that sense, and I think that when you’re in a team that doesn’t score an abundance of goals, you need to make sure you keep it tight at the back.
AROUND THE PAN
As part of Lewes FC’s commitment to promoting football done better, we are excited to announce that we are taking part in the ‘Green Football Weekend’ on the 5th February.
The Green Football Weekend is a wonderful initiative run by the FA, bringing together English football clubs and their fans to use the power of football to shine a light on climate change.’
For us, we will be serving only vegan food on the day, and we are encouraging any fans attending on the day to do their bit as well. We will also be selling pre-loved merch in the club shop as well as welcoming any potential volunteers for our community garden.
We’ve come up with ‘10 actions for Green Football Weekend’ which we’d love for you to try.
10 actions to support Lewes’ Green Football Weekend today and beyond
1. Walk, bring a bike or take public transport to the game.
2. Buy pre-loved products (training tops, match day kit, and various other unique items that wouldn’t usually be available to purchase.
3. Use digital team sheets – to access our team sheets digitally, please scan the QR codes around the stadium, we will also be putting up a handful of communal copies around the stadium.
4. Bring your own coffee cup to our matchdays.
5. Volunteer at the community garden.
6. Keep tickets on the phone and try to avoid printing them.
7. Go vegan for the day (and the future?)! – We serve a great selection of vegan food all year round loved by both our vegan and non-vegan fans. We are taking this a step further and going completely vegan for the day.
8. Switch to reusable menstrual products – check out the sustainable period underwear made by our matchday sponsors NixiBody
9. Use recyclable products wherever possible.
10. Separate your compost – Composting barrels at our stadium mean that nothing is wasted, and leftovers go straight back into the soil. Learn how to compost.
We also think it’s important to mention what we currently do to make the football club greener.
- Community garden set up by men’s player, Bradley Pritchard. Here we grow vegetables, some of which are even given out as Player of the Match Awards!
- Composting; nothing gets wasted at the club.
- Our stadium uses solar panels to help us control the amount of energy we use.
- Vegan food is served at every fixture.
- With our club being situated just a two-minute walk from Lewes Train Station, we always want to encourage fans to get the train or even walk to our games if they live local.
We don’t want to stop here in our bid to make the football club greener, and we know that right now, we are not perfect.
With that in mind, we would love for any potential sustainability partners to get in touch with our Commercial Manager: Stef@LewesFC.com
What’s more, you can pledge your support for us below by tapping on our name and what you will do to take part.
By pledging your support and committing to eco-friendly switches you can help the club climb the leaderboard amongst other clubs taking part.
DEALING WITH THE SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLS THE LEWES & CURVE WAY
INTRODUCING OUR VISITORS FROM BIRMINGHAM CITY
THE HISTORY
Birmingham City Women’s Football Club was formed in 1968 (under the original name of Birmingham City Ladies Football Club) by a group of female fans who played local friendly matches until 1970.
Initially the Club joined the Heart of England League that year and played in the league until 1973 when it underwent a major restructure and became known as the West Midland Regional League in 1974. The Club was successful during this period, winning these leagues five times during the 1970s and 1980s, before running into difficult times during the 1990s, with many staff and player changes.
In 1998, Blues Women were promoted to the newly created Midland Combination League and in their first season won the title, thus gaining automatic promotion into the National Northern Division. After two years, the team gained another promotion, this time to the top flight of Women’s football as they joined the FA Women’s Premier League.
The Club became inaugural members of the newly formed FA Women’s Super League (WSL) in 2011 and came close to winning it at the first attempt, leading for most of the campaign before being overtaken by Arsenal. They also reached the Continental Cup Final but once again found the Gunners in the way of their ambitions. That season was particularly notable for the goal scoring exploits of Rachel Williams, who finished as leading scorer as well as winning the FA Players’ Player of the Year Award.
Due to the second-place finish in 2011, Birmingham qualified for a place in the 2012/13 UEFA Women’s Champions League round of 32 for the first time in their history. Drawn against Italians Bardolino Verona, Birmingham won the first leg 2–0 but lost 0-3 at the Stadio Marc’Antonio Bentegodi, after extra time, to exit the competition at the first hurdle.
In May 2012, the Club won their first Women’s FA Cup, beating Chelsea on penalties in the final at Ashton Gate. That year also brought a consecutive second-place finish in the WSL and saw Blues finish runners-up in the Conti Cup. Such results meant Blues again qualified for the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
That led to a European high as Blues Women reached the competition’s semi-final. There, they eventually bowed out to Swedish side Tyreso FF in 2014’s second leg, the same year the Club started playing home matches at Damson Park in Solihull.
By November 2016 it was announced that Birmingham City Women would become fully integrated as part of the Birmingham City family following the takeover by Trillion Trophy Asia.
In May 2017, Birmingham City Women featured in their second FA Women’s Cup final in five years, this time facing Manchester City in front of a competition record-breaking attendance of 35,271 at Wembley Stadium. This was the first time the Club had played at the spiritual home of English football.
After securing their top-flight status at the end of the 2020/21 season, the Club made the appointment of Scott Booth as Women’s Head Coach for their 11th consecutive term in the WSL. The Scotsman arrived with a stellar coaching CV, and assembled a team before his departure in November 2021 saw Darren Carter take the reins on an interim basis.
Playing an entire campaign at St. Andrew’s for the very first time, Blues were the only team to beat Arsenal, toppling the Gunners live on Sky Sports, and secured Second City derby bragging rights on the season’s final day as they continued to show signs of a bright future ahead of their first campaign in the Women’s Championship.
In the summer of 2022, Darren Carter was appointed as the permanent Head Coach of the side, with former Blues player and 2012 Women’s FA Cup winner, Jo Potter, coming in as Assistant Head Coach.
THE BARCLAYS WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP FIXTURES AND RESULTS
THE LAST MEETING
| 21 Aug 2022 | Championship | Birmingham City | 0 | Lewes | 0 |
IPSWICH TOWN 0 LEWES 1 – SUNDAY 29 JAN
Lewes got through a tough away tie to Ipswich Town in the FA Cup Fourth Round on Sunday afternoon, thanks to a super effort by Emily Kraft.
It was a cup tie that didn’t catch fire and left very little to report on at half-time when neither team had registered a shot on target.
Both sides looked well organised and very difficult to break down. Emily Kraft did start brightly and caught the Ipswich defence on the half-turn a number of times but as a team, struggled to create anything meaningful.
It was an opportunity however, to look at new signings, Kirsty Barton who played 45-minutes, and on-loan Charlotte Wardlaw who completed a full-90.
The second-half was a carbon-copy of the first with both sides trying to control possession but neither goalkeeper being tested.
It took until the 74th minute for the Rooks to register a shot on goal when Grace Palmer’s terrific free-kick delivery resulted in a looping header from Amber-Keegan Stobbs which drifted over.
It sprung a bit of life into Scott Booth’s side though who emphatically took the lead just two minutes later. Kraft controlled the ball on the edge of the box, spun the defender, before a beautiful left-footed strike into the corner.
Scott Booth spoke heavily on professionalism in the build up to the game and it was impressive to see a lack of frustration from his side despite the lack of quality chances.
That professionalism saw them through to the end of the game without much of a response from Ipswich.
After the game, we got Scott’s thoughts on the performance.
“You could say the goal was one of the only real moments of quality in the game really. I have to be honest and say that Ipswich were really good, and we knew they would be, because we profiled that.
“They’re a good side who have played together for a couple of years now, at least, they know each other really well, they’re well-drilled, well-coached, and we didn’t really get going at all.
“I thought the players that came off the bench really helped us, I thought Johnno was immense when she came on towards the end, it was only the last little bit, but it gave us exactly what we wanted.
“Emma did well, kept the ball in for us up top, she can still do more, but she does steady us there. And I thought Grace did a really good job too.
“I don’t think they really troubled us, a couple of half-chances, we just have to be better at retaining possession, we don’t want games to be transitional and that’s exactly what today was.
“I also thought at times we could have put more tackles in, we could have got to the ball better, we could have done so many things better, but we also have to remember that it was always going to be a tough game.
“I’m just happy that we’re through and we can move on. The whole point of a game like this is we set the standards high, so when we don’t play well like today, we feel that.
“The coaches feel it and the players feel it so I think that’s a good thing in terms of not getting complacent.”
He was also full of praise for Kraft, despite feeling it wasn’t her best performance.
“We didn’t get frustrated which is good, but we just couldn’t seem to really get going. Krafty will be the first to say she didn’t play particularly well today. She could have kept the ball for us a lot better, but she has those moments of pure brilliance.
“She takes on the turn and the strike was phenomenal, there’s no stopping it.”
JAMES BOYES GALLERY
THE 2022/23 BARCLAYS WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP
YOUR 2022/23 LEWES SQUAD
| Squad No. | Name | Sponsored By |
| 1 | Sophie Whitehouse | Nathan Smith |
| 2 | Ellie Mason | Scott Currie2 |
| 3 | Rhian Cleverly | The Happiness Index |
| 4 | Amelia Hazard | Dawn Harding |
| 5 | Charlotte Wardlaw | |
| 6 | Ellie Hack | Little Stars Childcare |
| 7 | Nat Johnson | Alice, Tom & Russ Mould |
| 8 | Grace Palmer | |
| 9 | Emily Kraft | Michael Wirtz |
| 10 | Amber Keegan Stobbs | Bill Lynch |
| 11 | Emma Thompson | Mark Comford |
| 14 | Paula Howells | Bruce Taylor |
| 16 | Kirsty Barton | |
| 17 | Zoe Smith | |
| 18 | Rebecca McKenna | Leschenault Press & The Book Reality Experience |
| 19 | Lauren Heria | Alex Lambeth |
| 20 | Libby Copus-Brown | Joe Short |
| 21 | Valentine Pursey | |
| 22 | Josie Longhurst | Martin Scott |
| 23 | Izzy Dalton | Leschenault Press & The Book Reality Experience |
| 26 | Emily Moore | |
| 31 | Laura Hartley | Michael Scoates |
| 32 | Frankie Angel | |
| Valentine Pursey | ||
| Kenzie Weir | ||
| Aqsa Mushtaq |
IMPACT REPORT 21/22
We are delighted to announce the launch of our Impact Report for the 2021/22 season.
On the pitch, we can easily measure our impact by goals and League position. But what we do off the pitch is part of who we are too.
Whether it’s facilitating football sessions for different parts of our community, players delivering medicine and food to vulnerable local people or our campaigning work against inequality and bad governance, we are, to our core, a community club.
We try and get through a lot of good stuff every year so, to help us evaluate it all, we produce an annual Impact Report that shows the depth and range of our off-the-pitch work. And it’s all gloriously designed by our friends at T+T Design.
General Aqua Yoga, Aqua Walk, Pregnancy Aqua Natal classes available
HALF PRICE ‘one off’ taster classes available in week 1 or 2 of our January course
Wed 4th evening / Thur 5th pm, Wed 11th evening / Thur 12th pm
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 Barclays 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
Chair Stuart Fuller
Directors Willa Bailey, Tim Bradshaw, Ed Briggs, Scott Currie, Stuart Fuller, Andy Gowland, Lucy Mills, John Peel, Trevor Wells
Chief Executive Officer Maggie Murphy
Life Members
Peter Brook, Dorothy Brook RIP, Vic Blunt RIP, Pat Dartnell, Gary Elphick, Gordon Fowlie, Peter Hiscox RIP, Billy Nixon, Derrick Parris RIP, 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 Scott Booth
GK Coach Daniel Matraszek
General Manager Lynne Burrell
Nutritionist Stefano Montanari
Club Doctor Dr Daniel Hudson
Head Physiotherapist Adam Hutchins
Physiotherapist Maria Melero
Sports Therapist Liam Jenman
Sport Scientist Ivi Casagrande
Mental Coach Sarah Murray
Data Analyst Tom Drummer
Kit Manager Kerri Coombs
Communications Manager Jack Towers
Commercial Manager Stef McLoughlin
Fan Engagement Officer Shrey Nilvarna
Facilities Manager Damien watts
Golden Rook Rob Read
Web Editors Stuart Fuller & Jack Towers
Progcast Editors Stuart Fuller / Jack Towers / Stan Lahood
Club Photographer James Boyes & Grace Jones
Communication Manager Jack Towers
Commercial Manager Stef McLoughlin
NEXT UP AT PAN…
SUNDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2023
THE VITALITY WOMNE’S FA CUP
