On Sunday morning, with a bright white number 23 on the back of her blue shirt, Kent’s very own Alessia Russo will Step out into the Worlds spotlight in Stadium Australia leading the Lionesses front line in the Women’s World Cup Final.
It’s a long way from the playing fields of Bearsted where a young Russo learned much of her trade, and this week our Chief Football Reporter Mike Green spoke with current Bears first team boss Keith Stephens about her rise to national prominence has put one of her junior clubs on the map.
“The girls success had been a massive bonus for the club,” Stevens admitted.
“It’s brought a lot of work to the Club, we’ve had countless television crews visiting us through the group stages and the early knock-outs, we’ve had SKY, TNT, BBC and goodness knows who else and we’ve even got one coming to watch the Final with a lot of us at the Club on Sunday. Its great exposure for the Club it really is!”
“All that on the weekend when the Men’s first team host Isthmian League Southall in the FA Cup bidding to make history and reach the First Qualifying Round for the very first time in the Clubs history.
Despite all the positivity of the Lionesses getting into Sunday’s Final, Mr Stevens was wary about the potential surge in interest of the girl’s game in particular in the coming weeks and months, he explained: “It’s a difficult one for us a club the way the popularity has shot up. We’ve got thirty-one teams and we’re having real problems finding pitches for what we’ve already got with some having to play away from the ground.
“My wife (Lesley) is the secretary of the Club and she’s been receiving all the enquiries through our website. We’re getting nearly twenty enquiries at least every week from kids, mainly girls, wanting to play the game but we are so full in our squads with people queuing up to join them. The girls’ interest in the game has rocketed, it used to be just boys getting in touch, now it seems to be mainly girls.”
“We’re in a sticky situation where we want more girls’ teams to grow the game but there just isn’t the pitches around for them to play on!”
“For us we are seeing more girls playing with the boys’ sides, where we can’t get a full team, we are trying to get the girls in with spaces in the boys’ squads.
“Talking to other teams the real problem is finding the pitches so as girls football taking off because of what they did at the Euros last summer and now the World Cup this year, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the demand, we could take, three, four, five teams tomorrow but there isn’t just anywhere for them to play.”
Is this a problem across the County? Are we potentially missing out on the Alessia Russo’s, Chloe Kelly’s and Mary Earps of the future just because they have nowhere to play? Let us know here at Kent Sports News and we’ll take your findings and comments to the County FA.”