What Reading Women Mean To Me

Amid reports that Reading Women may have to drop down the pyramid due to funding concerns, Paul McGreal shares just how much the team means to him on a personal level.

The news of the possibility that Reading won’t be entering a team in the Women’s Championship for next season is tremendously sad.

Reported first in The Guardian, there are apparently discussions taking place for the club to drop down the women’s pyramid, and that there may be no academy or age-group teams operating in 2024/25. Only two players are believed to be contracted at senior level for the forthcoming season, with options held by the club not being taken up.

I can’t easily describe how numb reading the article by Tom Garry has left me. I have supported Reading Ladies (as was) since 2014, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that they have been a huge part in keeping my own personal mental health in the “positive” in the last decade.

10 years ago, I was in the middle of a difficult period of my life mentally. I took approximately six months’ leave from work and couldn’t really cope as an adult daily. I don’t know what triggered the episode, but I just woke up one morning, and couldn’t leave the house. When I did, I was in tears before the end of the road, so just carried on walking to the local doctor’s surgery, and got signed off work for a week, initially. Nothing improved, and the dosage of anti-depressants I was put on was just increased, while the doctor arranged for me to see a therapist.

Six months passed and I eventually started to see some shots of improvement. My anxiety had lessened, and after a course of cognitive behavioural therapy, I had the tools to help me help myself. I started to see friends again and undertook a carefully managed return to work.

At the start of this recovery, I woke up on a Sunday morning and took two big impulsive decisions. One was to sign up for a Rugby Union refereeing course (my wife played at the time). The second was to declare to my wife that I was going to go and watch some women’s football that day. Quite why this popped into my mind, I cannot recall. She encouraged me but asked a question that I still remember clearly: “Ah cool. Who are you going to watch?”

Such minor details hadn’t figured in my plan. A quick search showed that it was the final day of the WSL2 season, and that Reading Ladies were hosting Watford Ladies. Even better, the game was being played at Farnborough Town, which is the closest senior ground to where I live. I pulled on a coat, put my headphones in and walked into Farnborough.

My footballing allegiances didn’t include a women’s team, or Reading for that matter. I was brought up in North West London of Irish heritage, so I was brought up as a Celtic fan. When I was 11, my dad introduced me to the surreal world of non-league football with a visit to Hendon FC.

35 years later, I’ve served on the board of the supporters’ trust, watched them have some memorable cup runs, and suffered more than enough moribund matches to last the next few lifetimes. My first game supporting them was a few weeks before an FA Cup first-round game at Elm Park – I can still remember Sports Report giving news of an equaliser by Iain Dowie to make it 2-2 (Reading went on to win. We still have some fans who claim at least one of Reading’s goals was offside).

And that was pretty much it in terms of Reading, apart from one game I attended versus the Artists Formerly Known As Wimbledon on Boxing Day one year (my parents live in Mortimer, so it was something to do instead of eating turkey-based products).

The women’s game resulted in a comfortable victory for Reading. Google tells me that Reading won 3-0, and Bianca Bragg got two. I can only remember Grace Moloney and Harriet Scott (both Irish, and both playing in positions I have spent my entire Sunday League existence).

I remember Bonnie Harewood being an object in perpetual motion for 90 minutes, and I recall a Watford player having her nose splattered across her face for a close-range clearance – the sound of her pain-led sobbing didn’t leave my mind for quite some time. I also sat inadvertently beside Keith and Mr Spoons with the drum kit and the songbook. I wasn’t quite ready for this level of social connection, so moved at half-time to the quietest area of the ground to watch in solitude, and not have to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” pounded into my brain.

Despite not being completely an enjoyable experience mentally, it was a step on the road to recovery. Still playing at Cherrywood Road when the season started again in March the following year, I purchased a season ticket, which was quite a commitment. That season, I can remember the exact point when I went from just watching football to being invested. A Continental Cup tie at home to Chelsea resulted in a last-minute defeat. I can’t remember who scored Chelsea’s late winner, but I remember slumping down against the crash barrier that had been propping me up for 90 minutes. That was it. I cared.

That season was one that ended in glory, winning the title at Aston Villa on the last day of the season. I was on the coach up to Sutton Coldfield Town that day. I followed up the season ticket purchase for the first season in the topflight, despite the move to Adams Park. I even started joining in with some of the songs, carefully tailored to each individual player.

There were fewer victories, but the quality of visiting players made it worthwhile as well. As were the quality of players we were signing, each name seemed like an improvement on the last. By now, my mental health was in a comfortable place and after another spell of therapy and continued use of anti-depressants, I was considering myself “better”.

Our daughter arrived in 2017, and my relationship with Reading Women altered. I was still going to games, but now I had a willing companion. My attempts to press-gang friends into going generally fell on deaf ears or met with non-committal shrugs and shoe-gazing on a level Slowdive would have been proud of.

Niamh arrived in April and attended her first Reading game in September at Adams Park (she had attended her first football match the previous week in a cold Hampshire County Cup tie). Soon I was taking her whenever I could to football matches and it helped both of us. I could watch the football in between feeding, changing, and tending to her needs. I still believe that our trips to football established our bond even now.

Her relationship with football also changed as she has gotten older. From her buggy, to having her own seat. From accepting the snacks I provide her with, to ordering her own choices from the food stalls. From being placed back into her car seat and trundling home at full-time, to following her down pitch side at full-time to politely asking players for selfies and autographs.

As she has gotten older, her social life has also changed, which means we didn’t get to see Reading often last season – the earlier kick-off times always meant that getting away from Mini’s rugby in time for a game was a challenge we could never win.

And all the while, my mental health improved, and I had a friend/emotional crutch to attend games with. She would never be phased by the final score. It’s just not that important to a seven-year-old, which helped give me some perspective. She wasn’t there when we lost to Chelsea to confirm our relegation from the Women’s Super League so I had to deal with that on my own (arguably the day I could have done with her most). But I was able to cope with no dramas. It was, ultimately, just football.

The decision by the club that season to revert to part-time status for the team wasn’t totally unexpected. In all honesty, when various Twitter notifications appeared about the Women’s team, I believed that the club were closing the Women’s program completely, so was weirdly pleasantly surprised when they were “only” going part-time. Then players started to get released, among them the final remaining member of that initial game against Watford, Grace Moloney. That one hurt. The club would carry on though, and that would be the main thing to cling onto.

We didn’t get to the Select Car Leasing to see them last season. Our only games were at the EBB Stadium, Aldershot (the second-closest senior ground to our house). Two cup defeats, to Southampton and Wolverhampton Wanderers, were painful to watch.

After one of the games, I got into conversation with one of the back-room staff, a mutual acquaintance of my wife. The picture she painted was something Edvard Munch would have thought of as too grim. From that point onwards, I have been almost waiting for the news we’ve had recently. I believe that, had the team been relegated last season, it would have been easier for the club to trim their costs completely. The late-season reprieve on the pitch has only made that decision more public, rather than less likely.

The players that are left will all be now in this void, not knowing whether they will have a team to play for, having already likely missed out on the early part of the transfer window when most clubs do their business. For academy players the situation is the same – most clubs will likely already have sorted their allocation of players for the forthcoming year, leaving our youngsters potentially without a club at all next season, missing out on a year of their development.

The staff, having somehow held it all together over the last season despite all the attempts to chip away at the squad, will likely have to start the season looking for a club to employ them. The women’s game hasn’t quite caught up with the men’s game in terms of firing and hiring, providing less of a merry-go-round for them to hop aboard.

For all the above groups, the uncertainty of what tomorrow brings will induce worry, anxiety and all levels of concern. In the United Kingdom, it’s believed that as many as one person in every four suffer from some mental affliction. Assuming a squad of 20, that would be five players and probably two of the support staff in a difficult place right now.

I don’t know how mental health support is structured at professional football level, but I would say it would be an educated assumption that it is currently not available to the club’s Women’s players at this time. I can personally attest that getting mental health support from local GP services is very much a postcode lottery, so I worry for the players on a footballing level, but also a personal one. I just hope they have a familial support network around them.

For many reasons, I would hope that a takeover of the club happens soon (as I’m sure we all are). The women’s setup would hopefully be a fundamental consideration in any negotiations, but I think that, at this stage, simply having a women’s team to support and cheer on next season would be a happy outcome.