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Women and football?


Boycie

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Pride Park Stadium will soon be centre stage in women’s football – completing another step in a Derby County long-term plan.

A year ago, the club took the decision to see what they could do to help women’s football locally and came up with two objectives.

First, they wanted to form closer ties with Derby County Ladies football team.

Second, the club wanted to pitch for the FA Women’s Cup final to be held at the Rams’ home ground.

And the Rams have hit the target with both goals.

Arsenal Ladies and Sunderland Ladies will compete in the FA Women’s Cup final at Pride Park Stadium next Monday, while Derby County Ladies are firmly under the club umbrella and pushing for promotion.

“The decision to see if we could stage the FA Women’s Cup final was borne out of a discussion held just over 12 months ago when we decided to get more involved in girls’ and women’s football,†said John Vicars, the Rams’ vice president, operations.

"Our club has a fantastic following and just under 25% of that supporter base is female – we thought we should make a commitment to that.

"We have already got a big community scheme, which is quite diverse, and the development of girls’ football would fit with that as a natural extension.

"We made a couple of decisions – one, to start a proper Derby County Ladies set-up and two, to bring the women’s cup final to Derby. By doing both these things we thought we could really promote and develop the women’s game in Derby.

"There was a team in the area called Derby County Ladies, who had no affiliation with our club and who had a good set-up, and the first thing we did was establish a more formal partnership with them.

"We provide technical help to them and other miscellaneous assistance, while they sold Derby County match tickets and we gave a commission back on each ticket sale.

"That has been a success story.

"As for the second objective of getting the women’s cup final at Pride Park, we had to go down to the FA headquarters at Soho Square and explain what we wanted to do. We explained what we had done in partnership with Derby County Ladies and the previous events we have staged at Pride Park, such as the full England international in 2001.

“We knew that two or three other clubs were interested in staging the women’s cup final but learnt that we were the preferred bidder and found out we had got it for certain just before Christmas.â€Â

The Rams will be the landlords next Monday as the FA take over to stage the women’s showpiece final.

“Effectively, on the day the stadium is taken over by the FA and we work in partnership with them to get everything done,†Vicars added.

"Little things, like, for instance, the match programme, are done by the FA.

"It will be a normal game for us in terms of how we event manage it and the FA pick up all the costs. And for the sale of the tickets, we are just an agent for the FA.

"We will use our own team when running it, the stewards, for instance, and the FA will reimburse those costs.

“We don’t make any profit on the event, we just have the prestige of holding the final at Pride Park.â€Â

Immediately after learning they had been chosen to host the event, the Rams talked about setting a new attendance record for a women’s football match.

They would like 30,000 inside the ground, which would be a record for any women’s game in the UK.

And the Rams also want to showcase Pride Park as a venue for future major football events.

“We would very much like to have another under-21 international here one day and also host a women’s international,†Vicars said.

"We will be judged by our success next Monday and, hopefully, we can speak to the FA about bringing other major events to Pride Park.

"The women’s cup final is a prestigious event and will be good to watch. Arsenal Ladies are one of the premier teams in Europe and Sunderland wil be looking to cause an upset.

"We are delighted to be hosting the event. We think it will be good for the club and for the city as well.

“We hope it starts to put Pride Park back on the map as a venue to host major football events.â€Â

Derby Evening Telegraph.

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