Lewes women leading the fight for pay equality
First-team coach Alonso excited to be a part of such a ground-breaking club, writes Jim White
Anyone who happens to be in New York City tomorrow need have no fear of missing out. Because Lewes FC’S FA Women’s League Cup tie against Crystal Palace will be screened live in the Smithfield Hall on West 25th Street. That a game between two second-tier women’s teams in England is being shown in America at all is, according to the Lewes women’s manager Maggie Murphy, down to one thing: her club’s much-vaunted equality policy.
“A lot of people have become aware of us through our values and decided to support us,” she says of the equal pay and access initiative introduced at the start of the 2017 season, by which the club’s part-time men and women players are paid the same: between £100 and £250 a match. “As a result, a lot of people have become owners, as we call our shareholders. We now have owners in 26 countries around the world. I’m not going to describe it as a marketing campaign, because it is much more fundamental than that. But it has meant increased visibility and reach.”
Not least in the identity of the man who will be in the Lewes dugout tomorrow, the first-team coach Fran Alonso. Recruited to the staff at Southampton by Mauricio Pochettino, Alonso then worked under Ronald Koeman at St Mary’s, before following the Dutchman to Goodison Park where he was first-team coach.
“In my first year with Everton, Lewes started the equality campaign and I began to follow them,” he explains. “My sister played football in Spain. I always have to hear not nice comments about the women’s game, so I was really interested in a club that was paying the same to women as men.”
By coincidence, when he was sacked by Everton following Marco Silva’s appointment last year, the Lewes job had just become available. And while it might seem a sizeable downwards step from the Premier League to the second division of women’s football, Alonso has not regretted taking it.
“Yes, it is a big jump. But from the moment I arrived I fell in love with the club. I have no doubt that I want to be a part of it and of the revolution it is trying to deliver in terms of equality.”
By contrast, Palace’s women players were obliged to pay a subscription to play last season. “It’s naturally a challenge to play the teams associated with big clubs,” says Murphy.