Fulham finally got the promotion they had long been seeking last season, stepping up from tier five into tier four and the FA Women’s National League Division One South East.
It’s been a lengthy road back towards the big time for the team from West London – who at the turn of the millennium had a fully professional women’s team, with stars like Rachel Yankey and Katie Chapman gracing the side.
Now, under Steve Jaye, they are at the top of the table once more, unbeaten in the league, and one point ahead of second-placed Norwich City – although they’re not getting carried away just yet.
“We were so excited that we got promoted last season,” captain Megalie Mendes tells SheKicks.net. “We’ve been trying for a couple of seasons and then we finally did it.
“And then all of a sudden you’re into the new season, and then we just hit the ground running and now we’re still top of the table. I don’t think any one of us expected it in a sense, but we just wanted to continue the momentum.
“We had such good recruitment in last season, so I think that helped us really set our way from the start of the season already, and we always knew once we got out of tier 5 that we could really compete in tier 4 just because we had been playing tier 4 sides across the FA Cup, and we had been beating them quite confidently.
“So we always knew that we would be able to compete, but then weren’t really expecting to be top of the table.
“But it’s a long season, so we just have to keep the consistency.”
“You always have a hope,” adds Jaye.
“We’re riding that wave at the moment of winning breeds winning. So it’s been really positive.”
“Players want to play for Fulham”
The mention of recruitment is telling – it wasn’t so long ago that Jaye was reliant on open trials ahead of a season, and hoping to attract players along.
“We can certainly be a bit more targeted with who we want to approach and who we want to bring into the football club,” says Jaye with understatement. “So much has changed in the time since I started from that side, but also from so many different sides of what we do and deliver. We’re really, really fortunate that we’re very well supported by the club generally.”
Mendes points to the resources now on offer to the women’s team, and she thinks the general interest and support for women’s football more broadly has encouraged clubs to invest even further.
“Because we’re now winning, it feels like we’re also giving back to the club as well from the performance side,” she says. “It’s just really helpful and just creates an environment where players want to come down and play for Fulham.”
This weekend they face local rivals London Bees – who sit third in the table, six points behind Fulham.
“It’s a big game,” admits Mendes. “The whole team thinks every single game we go into in the league is a big game, just because it’s so tight and you don’t want to drop any points, so you want to kind of keep that consistent. We always treat it game by game, so for us, it’s just another another weekend where we have to go and get three points.”
Steve Jaye: Pressure is a privilege
As league leaders, they know there is a target on their backs – but as Jaye says, quoting tennis superstar Billie Jean King, pressure is a privilege.
“In order for us to be able to achieve some of the things that we want to achieve, you have to accept that that’s part and parcel of it,” he says. “We do a fair bit of work around how we manage that, and we’re very process-driven, with the way that we want to play and with the way that we design training and things. We try and have as much familiarity as we can within training and then obviously to then relate that to a matchday so that hopefully when the players get to the game by itself, it doesn’t feel new or difficult or tough to work through.
“And if we experience tough moments, we can just go back to the process that we set up and try and rely on that as the core basis.
“And if that’s delivered well, then yeah, we back ourselves to compete against anybody, really, that we play against.”
Fulham play London Bees at the Fulham FC training ground on Sunday, 30th November, kick-off 2pm.
