The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
‘We were like the Borrowers’: Spurs’ rise from grass roots to a sold-out Wembley
Team founded 39 years ago as Broxbourne Ladies have come a long way thanks to work of diehard volunteers
Before she takes her seat in the Royal Box at Wembley tomorrow, Val Weaver will go to Edmonton Cemetery to visit her late brother Glenn, the man described as the “heart” of Tottenham Hotspur’s women’s team.
“We’ll have a few words,” says Weaver of her brother, who helped run the club for more than 20 years, and had been chairman since 2000, before he died in 2015. “Everything I have done has been with him in mind, because it’s his legacy.”
Tottenham’s humble beginnings and the efforts of the many volunteers who nurtured the club until the men’s club took over in 2019 will make the Women’s FA Cup final – the first in their history – extra special for those who remember the days when Tottenham were a grass- roots team in the Greater London leagues.
Volunteers such as Weaver and June Clarke, who ran the club after Glenn died. Clarke, whose involvement began when her daughter was playing for the under-11s in the late 1990s, says: “We were like the Borrowers – we used to scrimp and save. Now to see what the girls get is phenomenal.”
Weaver, who went part-time in her day job for six months after her brother’s death to give the club “a little push”, adds: “We’ve got something Manchester United will never have and that’s history.”
She is referring to the fact that tomorrow’s final opponents joined the second tier via a licence application process, after 13 years without a senior women’s team, in contrast to Tottenham’s journey up the pyramid via promotions.
Tottenham’s executive director, Donna- Maria Cullen, says: “I remember at Glenn’s funeral, Val said, ‘Donna, we have to keep Spurs Ladies going, it cannot stop’. It’s been completely organic growth, and we’ve done it the hard way.”
The journey began 39 years ago when friends Kay Brough and Sue Sharples co-founded Broxbourne Ladies. Now sitting in Cullen’s office at Lilywhite House, adjacent to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Brough says: “I’m not sure which one of us came up with the bright idea of ‘ let’s form our own team’, but it wasn’t easy because, back then, local authorities didn’t want women playing on their pitches.
“In the first game, we had a set of shirts, two footballs, a plastic bucket and a sponge, and nine players. We started off in the Greater London leagues, division four out of four, and managed to get promotion. I was quite proud of that.”
In 1991, Brough and Sharples received permission to change the team’s name to Tottenham Hotspur Ladies. Brough, whose roles included everything from washing kit to booking pitches to organising social events, adds: “In the beginning, it was difficult but I’m glad we persevered. We put the seeds in and now they’ve bloomed.”
The stem began to grow during the tenure of co- head coaches Karen Hills and Juan Amoros, who were at the club from 2007 and 2011 respectively until 2020. They oversaw a rise from the amateur fifth tier to the Women’s Super League. “When we looked at coaches at the time of Glenn’s passing, Karen was at the [ Tottenham Hotspur] Foundation and she said, ‘ I’d love to do it’,” Cullen says. “Later, we added Juan, they were a great combination.” Amoros, who is now managing American side Gotham FC, recalls: “When I got the opportunity for an interview for a club like Spurs. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Tottenham, it’s a massive club’, then when I got there, it was grass roots, but I didn’t care because it was
Tottenham. We knew it was going to be a long path. Glenn was the heart and Karen was the engine, running the first team and the academy. Karen was one of the main reasons why Spurs is where it is now. I loved working with her.
“Glenn was a diehard fan and I fell in love with Spurs because of him. If we could choose someone to watch this FA Cup final with, it would be Glenn. It was probably the dream of his whole life.”
Glenn had taken over the side after attending a fundraiser following Sharples’ death in 1994. Val Weaver adds: “His love affair was Tottenham Ladies. When he passed away, June [Clarke] and I said, ‘ We need to knock on doors and push things through the main club’. To get into the WSL was unbelievable.”
At one point, Weaver and Clarke were overseeing a club with more than 150 women’s and girls’ players, but in 2019 it was time for the men’s club to take over. Cullen says: “I remember saying, ‘I know it’s your baby, but…’ I knew in my heart that they loved the club so much that they would want to take the next correct step for it.”
Four years later, Andy Rogers was appointed managing director of the women’s team and he oversaw the appointment of Robert Vilahamn as head coach last summer. The appointment came at a similar time to that of Ange Postecoglou for the men’s team. “Women’s or men’s, we go through the same thing,” Rogers says of the recruitment process. “There are significant similarities when you watch all our sides, the intensity we play at, the high press. There’s an element of risk, but we want to be the most exciting team on the planet. [After finishing ninth last season] we wanted to change the narrative. Being in an FA Cup final is huge for the club.”
Cullen, who has been on Tottenham’s board since 2006, believes the women’s team’s training facilities now being on the same site as the men’s has been key. “That’s also allowed us to bring across some of the expertise in the men’s set-up. We’ve put in a planning application for a women and girls’ academy [to be built] next door.”
More immediately, the focus is on tomorrow and a sold-out Wembley. They reached their first major cup final thanks to a 2-1 comeback win in extra time over Leicester City and Weaver says: “I’ve not stopped smiling. The last couple of weeks have been really emotional. I keep pinching myself. Next the dream is getting on a plane to watch them in the Champions League.”