Leanne's Lionesses to be crowned

Millwall Lionesses LFC v Barnet FC Ladies
The FA Women's Premier Leagur Southern Division
3pm, Sunday 19 April 2009
Millwall FC Training Ground, Millwall

Millwall Lionesses are set to entertain Barnet on Sunday as the newly crowned champions of the FA Tesco Women’s Premier League Southern Division.

Eight years after being relegated from the top flight, the Lionesses will celebrate their return when they receive the winners’ trophy ahead of their meeting with the Bees.

Clinching the title does not, however, mean that the London team will let up in their pursuit of points during the run-in to the end of the campaign.

As they prepare to face second-in-the-table Barnet, former England defender Leanne Champ – back at the club where she started her career after six years with Arsenal – said: “We want to win the division by as many points as possible.

“It’s fantastic to get Millwall back into the top league because that’s where we feel we belong. But before we start thinking about playing in the National Division again, we’ve got four games left this season and we want to win them all.”

Manager Matt Beard, who took over from previous boss Keith Boanas in mid-season following Boanas’s appointment as Estonia’s national team manager, will be driving Champ and her colleagues to extend their impressive run since he took charge.

“We’ve not lost a league game since I came in,” said Beard, and I want to keep that record intact. I inherited a very good squad from Keith, who did a superb job here, and I’ve just carried on from where he left off.

“The girls have been brilliant, especially in the last couple of months when we’ve been playing twice a week to catch up on our games after having so may postponed in the first half of the season.

“Their commitment has been total, they’ve been very professional in the way they’ve gone about things and they thoroughly deserve the promotion they’ve won.

“I’m sure they’ll finish the season off in the same manner, and we’ve got the London Cup Final against Arsenal to come as well as our last few league games, so there’s plenty still to play for.

“And when it comes to next season, they’ll definitely be good enough for the top flight – they showed that earlier this season when they beat Doncaster Belles in The FA Cup and were then very unlucky to go out of the competition when we played Blackburn.

“Both of those are decent National Division sides and we were more than a match for them. So the girls will be fine next season, but meanwhile I want to finish this season in style – starting with three points on Sunday."