Inside the Lower Leagues: Reading's search for revival
After almost a decade in the top division, Reading took voluntary relegation to Tier 5 admist financial ruin last summer. Now, they're simply looking to steady the ship, first and foremost...
10 years ago, Reading’s women’s team was beginning a season which would ultimately end with a first ever promotion to the Women’s Super League 1, as it was known at the time.
It was a halcyon year all round for the Royals under then new head coach Kelly Chambers, including having a player represent England at the 2015 World Cup in the form of Fran Kirby, despite their WSL 2 status, before she was sold to Chelsea.
Under Chambers, Reading went on to become mainstays in the top division, regularly finishing in the top half and playing home to household names such as England’s most-capped player, Fara Williams, fellow internationals Jade Moore and Jo Potter, as well as Wales legend Jess Fishlock.
But like many before them, Reading is a prime example of a club left behind by the sport as women’s football develops at exponential pace.
After relegation from the Women’s Super League in 2023, the team reverted to part-time status back in the rebranded Championship last season, hindered by the financial issues strangling the whole club, scraping by and surviving a second straight relegation by the skin of their teeth last season.
But with no more money in the pot, the Royals voluntarily demoted themselves from the Championship down another three divisions into the Southern Region Women’s Football League.
Almost 12 months on, the team, now unrecognisable from a year ago and with a group of players either recruited regionally or from the club’s academy, have just three wins from 13 games, but should survive based on the fact the bottom duo of Badshot Lea and Selsey haven’t won a league game between them this season, with Reading beating both in their last two games to move clear of the drop.
The primary duo left to pick up the pieces were already part of the club’s furniture, with former Emerging Talent Lead Emma Hopkins now Head of Women’s Football, while Pedro Bruno is the team’s head coach, previously working as the club’s Under 16s assistant head coach, juggling his role with his full-time job as a tutor at Newbury Precision Football Academy.
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Hopkins takes up the story.
“The summer just gone was obviously a really tricky time to try and navigate for the women’s and girls’ pathway,” she admits. “There was a big chance in terms of how the club sits under the umbrella of the Community Trust now. We had to find sponsorship and a financial stream to keep the women’s team going on a lower pathway.
“We still have Under 13s and Under 15s academy teams, that was important for me coming from my previous role to ensure we had a pathway which continued, not just a first team. I’ve been at the club nine years and the majority of my work has been there, and the club has always had a fantastic reputation for producing excellent young players, so it was important we made sure girls in the area could still come through.”
Despite now being under the Community Trust, the team is still supported as much as it can be by the club as a whole, still in the midst of various takeover talks in the hope of a brighter future.
Select Car Leasing, the primary sponsor of the team and stadium in the past, has remained on board, with Hopkins practically the only full-time member of staff working on a day-to-day plan to keep the club going.
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