Everton Women lost to Tottenham Hotspur in their first official match full-time at Goodison Park
Perhaps Everton Women should have moved into Anfield instead? Whereas the Blues’ female footballers have triumphed six times in a row against their Liverpool counterparts across Stanley Park with Ornella Vignola becoming the first player representing the club there to net a hat-trick since Dixie Dean in 1931, their inaugural competitive game at Goodison Park since they took up permanent residence ended up in a 2-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in a contest in which Brian Sorensen’s side always found themselves very much second best.
Indeed, in contrast to their away day successes against the Reds, following this reversal, Everton Women have now only won one of their last half dozen fixtures at the Grand Old Lady, and that was also against Liverpool. New owners The Friedkin Group of course come from the USA where women’s ‘soccer’ has got a rich pedigree and they have got big plans for the Blues’ female footballers. With the big four domestic team sports of American football, baseball, basketball and (ice) hockey commanding the attentions of many male athletes in that country, women’s football has been able to flourish without the prejudices and chauvinistic attitudes that have sometimes held it back on these shores where the men’s game is king and the Premier League is the most lucrative domestic division on the planet.
But after having to play catch-up with some other nations, women’s football is now very much on the up here with England having won back-to-back European Championships and curiously nine of the Lionesses were either former Everton players/and/or Merseysiders. The huge attendances that women’s club sides are enjoying in London and even to a lesser extent in Manchester, haven’t yet been matched in this footballing hotbed for the men’s game – but that hasn’t always been the case. As covered in this correspondent’s book Spirit of the Blues: Everton’s Most Memorable Matches & Goodison Park’s Greatest Games and also featured on the new timeline that adorns the exterior of the Main Stand, on Boxing Day 1920, a monster crowd of 53,000 watched Dick, Kerr Ladies defeat St Helens 4-0 in what remained a world record gate for a women’s club fixture for over 98 and perhaps more incredibly, a better turn out than either Everton or Liverpool attracted over that festive period. In contrast, there were 6,473 present for this historic occasion. But that’s still a big increase on what the Blues could get at Walton Hall Park and even with the Bullens Road Stand, Upper Gwladys Street and Top Balcony of the Main Stand closed off, along with some sections of the Park End, they’re going to have to get used to their much more spacious surroundings. In that respect, their adaptation might not be as straightforward as the men’s side who could play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history this season and are already feeling at home at Hill Dickinson Stadium. The weather conditions were not kind and did not help. Septembers in this country often produce relatively balmy ‘Indian Summers’ but this was cold and damp. However, those who watched on from the Gwladys Street kept up the tradition of it being the end for Everton’s most vociferous supporters as they kept singing throughout with terrace chants featuring adapted lyrics: Grand Old Team (Everton girls are there) & Spirit of the Blues (The blue girls are on the rise). Like David Moyes’ side, there has been a significant beefing up of the squad with nine new signings but on this evidence there still needs significant gelling required if Everton have aspirations to be ‘best of the rest’ behind the established powers in the Women’s Super League. Under the leadership of a Liverpool-born manager and former Blues academy player, Martin Ho, Spurs bossed this contest from the start. Home keeper Courtney Brosnan had already had to deny Drew Spence from close range before a neat exchange of passes from Cathinka Tandberg and Olga Ahtinen saw the latter break the deadlock with a cool finish on 27 minutes. If that was too easy for the visitors, the clincher four minutes into the second half will have been even more disappointing. Tandberg spotted Brosnan way off her line in the Park End goal and left the Everton keeper red-faced as she chipped her from around 40 yards out with an opportunistic but devastatingly accurate finish. Despite being up against an opposition custodian named (Lize) Kop, the Blues didn’t even test the Spurs number one as they failed to register a single shot on target in a lacklustre display hardly fitting of the occasion.