Norwich City Meet Norwich City Ladies

Did you know there are two Norwich City Football Clubs? One represented on the pitch by boys. One represented by girls.

The boy version gets a lot of attention, especially from us.

The girl version gets almost none, again we’re guilty in this regard (until now).

One name, two very separate clubs, so what can be done to bring them together?

Our old mate Gary Gowers compiled an excellent introduction to the team on MyFootballWriter recently and we understand they will be providing excellent coverage through the season, aided by the efforts of a number of enthusiastic volunteers.

But is this enough? Of course it’s not. We are a football club that places so much importance on community, on togetherness, on unity, so let’s have more of that.

Read any of the pieces we (or anyone else has published) on the joy of football, or even life generally and the answer is always being part of a community, having like-minded friends and family all enjoying something together.

With that in mind, it makes sense to me on a community level to make the Norwich City family as big and inclusive as it can possibly be. Plus, for those of you who love money, an economic case can be made, especially right now when, on the back of the Women’s World Cup, women’s football is a huge growth area.

When Stuart Webber joined City from Huddersfield he talked about Norwich offering a unique geographical opportunity. As anyone who has left the county can attest, Norwich is a long (and winding) way from any major metropolitan area. Plus, there are no other teams in this region in the Women’s Super League or Championship, with our closest rivals in those regards being 120 miles away in London.

Look at the map of stadiums for Euro 2021 being hosted in England – there’s a HUGE geographical gap in the east of England. Carrow Road would have been perfectly sized to be among the host stadiums…

So how do we all help build the club to a level where it can compete at that level?

First, we go and physically support them. With the Men having eight less games this season, we can all make a trip to Blofield. That’s why we’ll be ensuring there’s an ACN and Barclay End Norwich presence at some Ladies games over the season. More news to follow on that front, but we’d love for you to join us and get behind the girls.

While we’re on stadiums, the ladies’ team are currently based at Plantation Park out in Blofield, which they share with Norwich United. With Premier League tickets likely to be like gold dust for many families in Norfolk this season, we’d love to see the club extend the work they’re doing at the Nest and open up Carrow Road for a couple of games, when the fixture list allows? Just as they have done with male U23 games, the more live, yellow and green, football that we can offer to youngsters, the more likely they will catch the bug we all caught. Furthermore, kids across East Anglia should be able to dream of one day turning out at Carrow Road, regardless of their gender.

Having had conversations with people within both clubs, it is clear that there is a lot of work being done to strengthen those ties; things like gathering content to give the Women’s team a space on canaries.co.uk and moves to promote the Women on the Men’s social media platforms, all of which are great but of course we’d like to see more. Maybe the day we see a ‘one club’ team photo, much like Arsenal have done since 2004, is not far away.

These are all gestures that would be an excellent jumping off point. But it needs to be just the start of something altogether more inclusive, much like the club embraced the creation of Proud Canaries FC.

We’re Norwich City, not Norwich City Men and Norwich City Women. One City Strong.

While you’re here

You may have heard we recently released a print version of Along Come Norwich, with all new original content from a collection of brilliant writers. We still have a few left, if you’re interested click here, all profit as usual to the flag crowdfunder.