Charlton, Reading and a pattern of women’s teams being cut when clubs face financial trouble

On May 7, 2007, Dimitar Berbatov and Jermain Defore scored in a 2-0 win for Tottenham Hotspur over Charlton Athletic. The result meant Charlton’s relegation from the Premier League was confirmed, ending a seven-year run in the division.

That same afternoon, their women’s team were facing Arsenal in the FA Cup final, hosted at the City Ground in Nottingham. Despite an early goal from Katie Holtham, they eventually lost 4-1. Little did they know then that the result at The Valley was going to be far more influential for their future.

Charlton’s experiences in the months following that day echo those of numerous clubs within the women’s game.

The recent decision by Reading to withdraw their women’s team from the Women’s Championship, the second tier of English women’s football, and have them re-enter at tier five is indicative of how little has changed over the past 17 years. Despite the vast strides made at the top of the game, many teams continue to find themselves subject to the whims of their owners, the board or directly linked to the success (or otherwise) of the men’s team. 

This is the story of Charlton’s sudden demise.

The Valley had played host to the Women’s FA Cup final itself in 1999, which was when Peter Varney, chief executive of Charlton at the time, first expressed interest in having a senior women’s team during conversations with Keith Boanas, who was the technical director of the girls’ centre of excellence at the club. The men’s senior team had been promoted to the Premier League prompting a rush of investment within women’s football and the junior teams.

Croydon Ladies had just won the double, and Crystal Palace had shown interest in taking them over, but Charlton swooped in instead. The move was not without controversy.

“We’ve been looking for some time for a team to put on top of our pyramid and we heard on the grapevine that the Croydon players were unhappy,” explained Charlton’s general manager Mick Everett when the deal happened. Croydon FC’s chairman Ken Jarvie described the decision as “farcical”.

The changes for Croydon’s players when they moved to Charlton were immediate. Goalkeeper Pauline Cope was one of those who had been at Croydon previously. At the age of 30, she suddenly had a goalkeeper coach for the first time.

“My game improved 75-80 per cent,” says Cope. “Twice a month I was training with Dean Kiely, who was the men’s first-team goalkeeper.

“The more I trained with Deano and the more I was training with Mickey Cole (the goalkeeper coach), the better I was becoming. I felt untouchable.”

“I think the club supported us well enough at that time,” says Boanas, who became the team’s manager. “We started with no salary but everything else was provided. When we got some players that were from further distances, they agreed to pay them some expenses.

“Charlton were fairly quick to provide us with a professional environment. It was a building process for them because it was new. I’d never say I felt the need to go in and say: we demand this, we demand that.

“That came with seeing what was going on with Fulham, with Arsenal and saying if they wanted us to compete, we’re going to need this and this, and eventually it came.”

Building on what Croydon had already achieved, Charlton immediately found themselves competing at the top of women’s football, forming a rivalry with Arsenal.

Over the course of the next seven years, they had plenty of success, winning the League Cup twice and the FA Cup once, as well as reaching the final on three further occasions.

Casey Stoney joined the club in 2002 and became captain, while Fara Williams played for them between 2001 and 2004. In 2004, Eni Aluko joined, commuting from Birmingham for training while studying for her A-Levels. It was her goal that gave Charlton their sole FA Cup win in 2005, something Boanas described as the highlight of his time at the club.

But despite the success, Charlton were struggling to generate interest in the women’s team.

“In those days, women’s football wasn’t well-supported as an entity,” Varney tells The Athletic. 

“The crowds were poor. We were trying hard to get sponsors for the team but there just wasn’t the same interest as there was in the men’s game. So it was heavily subsidised.”

That became a challenge when Charlton’s men’s team were relegated. 

The 2006-07 season was the first year that parachute payments were introduced for clubs relegated from the Premier League, with Charlton set to receive £18.5million ($24.1m at today’s rates) across two years in order to deal with the shortfall in TV rights money that came from playing in the Championship.

However, Deloitte estimated at the time that it was the most costly season ever to be relegated from the top division, with an expected drop in revenue of between £25million to £30m.

“The problem was that when you’ve been in the Premier League for a number of years, as we had, your cost base right across the club goes up and up and up,” says Varney.

“Then when you lose your status, the reality hits of what you’ve got to do to try to cope with the new revenues that you are getting.

“There were some really tough decisions. The women’s team got headline treatment but lots of staff were sacked, players were sold.

“My job was to say to the board of directors, ‘Look, in order to get the figures you want me to get to, these are the options’.

“It was a huge figure that had to be recouped. And therein lies the problem.”

Boanas had been told the total budget for the whole women’s programme, including the reserve team, academy and centre of excellence, came to £250,000. By June 23, 2007, six weeks after the men’s team were relegated, Charlton’s board decided to cut all of it.

“The worst feeling was knowing we’d been on paper the more successful team,” says Boanas.

“Having been in seven, eight cup finals and always been challenging for the title, we were representing the club in a really positive way.

“At the time, they didn’t even give us the choice of staying and playing for nothing. I think if I’d gone to that group of players and said, “There are no funds for next year”, the majority would have stayed. We weren’t given that choice.”

Boanas was forced to phone the players and let them know.

Captain Stoney did not hold back in her view, telling the BBC at the time “I’m disgusted with the club — the men get relegated and we get punished.”

Midfielder Danielle Murphy said in an article for the BBC: “The men’s team got relegated and now the only people to suffer are the girls. The men underperform but still keep their massive pay cheques, and the women’s side has all its financial support stopped.

“The Charlton board continue to sit in their lovely Laura Ashley offices and drive in their fast cars — the little girls who dreamt of playing for Charlton and England are told the girls’ section of the club is no longer going to exist. How fair is that from this family-orientated club?”

Players in the academy at the time included Arsenal and England forward Alessia Russo, Manchester United full-back Hannah Blundell and Tottenham midfielder Kit Graham. Fortunately, in August, a deal was struck that allowed Charlton’s Community Trust to take over the running of the women’s team and academy. Former Charlton midfielder Paul Mortimer took over as manager.

@CaseyStoney hope you remember this day made in SE7 Alessia Russo @fara_williams47 @EniAlu pic.twitter.com/iPWMFIYncT

— Deano (@deanofcafc) July 27, 2022

“I spoke to every single player that had left us,” Mortimer explains. “But with the way they had been treated, they were never going to come back and play for Charlton.” Only midfielder Kim Dixson ended up staying.

Despite Mortimer’s best efforts to scrabble a team together, Charlton finished bottom of the league in 2007-08 and were relegated.

Boanas says it is impossible to know what might have happened had the funding not been cut.

“Our aim was always to, if not maintain, get better,” he says. “Had we stayed at that level, we’d have still been challenging the next year no matter what, because we wouldn’t have lost any key players, and we did have a good youth development programme.

“We were consistently turning over good youngsters. During my time there, we had 24 England internationals at senior and youth level. So we definitely would have continued to challenge.”

In just seven years, Charlton had gone from desperately trying to secure a senior women’s team to getting rid of one.

Varney insists that if they were in the same position today, the outcome would be different.

“I suspect, if I’m being honest, that if you wind the clock forward and were talking now, that’s probably a decision that wouldn’t have been taken,” he adds.

Yet the experiences of teams like Reading show that is not a clear-cut reality.

“Some of the clubs now are thinking having a women’s team is a hindrance,” says Cope.

“They would rather take the stick for six months (for cutting it) but, after that, no one’s going to be talking about it. That’s the crux of it. No one really cares.”

For Charlton, the women’s side became a separate legal entity affiliated with the men’s side when they unsuccessfully applied to join the Women’s Super League in 2013. They finally gained promotion to the Championship in 2018, and last season missed out on promotion to the WSL by one point, coming second to Crystal Palace.

Fittingly they are now managed by Karen Hills, who played as a centre-back at Charlton for almost their entire original existence.

Their experience shows it is not impossible to find your way back towards the top of the pyramid but it is also a reminder of what you lose. As Boanas says, it is impossible to know whether Charlton could have sustained their success in women’s football after the financial circumstances changed and much more money was required to compete at the highest level. But the opportunity was taken away from them, as it continues to be taken away from women across the country.

(Top photo: Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)