A FOOTBALL club has set its sights on breaking into the game’s top level in a “ferociously ambitious” plan to put Camden Town on the sporting map.
Camden Town WFC, currently in the seventh tier of women’s football, is hoping to make the “promised land” of the Women’s Super League. Within 10 years, they want to be competing with the game’s giants like Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City.
No ordinary project, the club has already been transformed from a side playing on bobbly Regent’s Park pitches to matches at Wingate & Finchley FC’s ground, and is now turning out in cutting edge new kits brought to life by new lead partners Adobe, the global software company which provided creative apps including Adobe Express to design them.
Club chairman Richard Mahoney told the New Journal: “We are ferociously ambitious. We are well aware of how difficult it is going to be. We need two promotions every three seasons basically.
“But what’s the point of being anything different? The goal is the promised land. One thing we’ll know is that we will get close.”
Mr Mahoney played as a young man and almost broke into the first team at Oxford United. He later completed his coaching badges.
He said: “I’m an accountant by training, but I am also a businessman. I could see there was something happening in women’s football. When I was at secondary school there was maybe one five a side team for the whole school – but things are so different now. It was two years before the Lionesses won the Euro championships and I saw Camden Town was available.
“I thought I’ve got to look into this. Look at participation rates, look at the commercial deals. Can we get the bums on seats? All the key metrics were showing up and up. I thought this is the time to get in.”
Mr Mahoney said Camden Town WFC was already known as a great club for “young players to progress to senior football”, but that there were issues with training and general professionalism.
He said: “I remember turning up at Camden about four years ago and they were playing on muddy, horrible pitches in Regent’s Park.
The grass was overgrown. “The footballers were great, but they weren’t very serious and although they were playing for fun, they weren’t getting on very well together.”
He added: “Things are changing, and I was thinking: can we get there first? So we changed the whole infrastructure of the club. Got a proper training ground, a kit, a stadium, did the social media properly – everything that goes with a professional outfit. If we want to compete at tiers above, that’s what we are going to have to do. That was our gift to the players.”
The club brought in a new manager, Harry Sherman, with serious ambitions to push the team up the league ladders.
Mr Mahoney said: “Running a football club – a lot of people think it’s just about buying players, but if you invest in the manager, a really good manager, they will turn a good player into a great player. And then excellent players into world class players.”
Mr Mahoney said he wanted to copy “the Arsenal model” for Camden Town, by ensuring former players have a hand in masterminding the coming revolution.
“Our inspirational captain, could she be a future chairman of Camden Town? Absolutely,” he said. “All the roles – from the technical director to match day marketing – I want players involved.”
He added: “Camden is not famous for football or sport. There are no proper football pitches in Camden Town. The closest non-league stadium with the quality we wanted is where we are now.”
But Mr Mahoney said the club had deep roots in Camden and would continue with its community work and also help facilitating networking events for charities.
“We are averaging 80 to 90 attendance at the moment. Our record attendance was 205 in the FA Cup,” he said. “Things are growing, you feel it out there on the pitch too. When we walked out in our new kits the other day against Comets, who usually beat us, there was a sense of fear. We kind of won the game in the tunnel.”
The team lost to rivals South London First in the cup last Sunday but the club remains undeterred.
Asked if the journey was like the underdog story seen at Wrexham in the men’s game, where Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have transformed the club’s ambitions – while filmed by Netflix – Mr Mahoney said: “Adobe have sent the cameras over already to do some filming already. A season is a story. It’s a movie that hasn’t been written.”
He added: “We want everyone to see how seriously we are taking the games. How much effort we are putting in to promote the club. “It’s a lot of fun, and we get the sense the players are really buying into it.”
Written by Tom Foot for the CamdenNewJournal