“I always feel like I've got three children. I’ve got my two kids, plus the women’s league - that’s been my third child.”
Those were the words of Tessa Baker (née Hayward) who in the formative years of the women’s pyramid system spent over a decade as Secretary of The FA Women’s Premier League. From 2011 she also assisted with the launch and early seasons of the Women’s Super League, remaining active across both before moving fully into the role of Competitions Manager at WSL Football.
This archive showcases some of the brilliant teams and individuals that have helped form the history and lore of the national leagues. But the people behind the scenes, who spent their working hours living and breathing the competition, were also an important ingredient in the growth of not only the leagues but also the women’s game in its entirety.
Baker was one such key FA employee from the late 1990’s; but even earlier on the burgeoning women’s football scene was Sue Barwick. She had joined The FA in a secretarial role in 1984 and 10 years later was asked to take on the day-to-day administration of the FAWPL from its first season under the auspices of the governing body.
Remembering the time-pressed responsibility of compiling the league’s handbook in that summer of 1994, along with then Head of Women’s Football, Helen Jevons, Barwick said:“Helen and I had to get the book together within the space of about six weeks.
“We had to start from scratch and we worked non-stop, compiling draft upon draft using one or two men’s league’s handbooks as a guide and amalgamating what we got from those sources with parts of the old Women’s FA handbook.”
For the next six years Barwick, an avid Arsenal fan, was solely responsible for the full range of administrative work in running the League and League Cup.
Her multi-tasking job incorporated the arranging of the League’s fixture list; club and player registrations; team sheets and match information; organising Cup draws and finals; liaising with other FA departments; ensuring rules were applied and followed; taking minutes at meetings; sending out League literature; and dealing with all correspondence and incoming telephone calls relating to the women’s game. At least when Barwick relinquished her additional duties relating to women’s senior and youth internationals, as she did in 1996, that freed up a modicum of bandwidth.
What’s more, and though computers were then gradually entering the workplace, it was still very much a paper-based administrative system in which Barwick was working. “For instance,” she noted, “all fixtures, results and match information had to be manually inputted and so that was 30 clubs you were trying to juggle. But when you're doing it, you just do it - I just tried not to take holidays at inconvenient times.”
Barwick was essentially moving the FAWPL forward in significant strides, from the early initiative of the Women’s Football Association in setting up the first nationwide women’s league in 1991. “It was bringing in the professionalism of The FA,” she said, “giving the League the governance and financial resources it needed.
Barwick passed on the secretarial reins to Baker ahead of the 2000-01 season, two years after the latter had joined The FA as an administrator under the by then Head of Women’s Football, Kelly Simmons. Baker, a passionate Aston Villa supporter, was handed a baptism of fire in her new role due to circumstances beyond her control.
“I knew quite a bit about the League as I’d been working in women's football for a couple of years by then,” she said, “but that first season I was secretary the country had awful floods and there was also foot and mouth disease that year, so all of the games were getting called off.
“It was absolute carnage in terms of fixtures. We even had to go through the rigmarole of getting permission to play a fixture in June. It was just awful. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what on earth have I taken on?’”
What Baker had taken on, over and above that particular ordeal, was a job with a workload that was perhaps even more demanding than the one which predecessor Barwick had successfully navigated.
Her remit included not only administering the League, the League Cup and Community Shield but the entire women's pyramid including all of the country’s Combination Leagues, Regional and County Leagues - and when the European club competition the UEFA Women’s Cup (later re-titled Champions League) started in 2002 she was The FA’s main contact for UEFA too.
She continued to input all data and compiled the fixtures by hand, aided by consultations with the England head coach at the time, Hope Powell – they looked at the national team’s fixtures and decided what club games worked best around them – and so Baker was happy when the earliest versions of The FA’s ‘Full-Time’ website started supporting the collection of match details from 2003-04 onwards. As the resource developed it proved a massive game-changer in this area of her work.
Though she much preferred to remain in the background, Baker was required to step at least into the partial spotlight on the pitch at the end of League Cup finals in order to support trophy presentations. Despite her reticence, these showcase matches were one of her favourite parts of the job.
“League Cup finals were always great,” she said, “because they were like a culmination of your season. Seeing them grow, the attendances getting bigger and doing things right – you know, the whole Cup final structure correctly, to the best of our abilities, that was really great.
“I was never bored in the job,” she added in a classic understatement, noting: “football is such a strange industry to work in. The only way you ever learn is to actually do it.”
Baker’s learning process was aided by her boss Mike Appleby and The FA’s chair of The FAWPL Committee, Peter Hough, with whom she says she had ‘a special relationship’. Both men were acknowledged by Baker, who opined of Appleby: “What he didn't know about football wasn't worth knowing.”
The FAWPL Committee in it’s early days was male dominated, a sign of the times in football, society and thus women’s game too, back then and for quite a while the former England star player Sylvia Gore was often the only female involved on the committee.
Both Baker and her predecessor Barwick were sometimes troubled with this scenario. Barwick recalled: “As there was only Sylvia on the committee who was female, I think she got closed down quite a bit for her opinion, because it didn't fit in with the male perspective. If Sylvia was arguing something the male members in the committee were saying, ‘Oh no, no, no.’
“Even though it was the elite women's league, it was still male-dominated at board level. Even when some people moved on, they were replaced by men. It seemed that there were more male administrators in the game than there were female.”
Baker added: “Unfortunately, not all council members were always as supportive as Peter Hough.
Some of them (the men) had no real interest in the women's game. They were put on that committee by The FA, they had no background in the women's game at all.
“But the times were different back then,” she added while giving a hat-tip to a later chair of the committee, Thura Win. “A lovely chap, really helpful, knowledgeable and sensible” she said as she acknowledged his influence in gradually engendering a more balanced atmosphere.
As time moved on, more and more females took up central roles in the women’s game and Baker is grateful for the tight core of fellow trailblazers at The FA that built the foundations for the sport and paved the way for others to follow.
“Kelly Simmons has always been there,” she said, “and then the gang of [Development Officers and FA managers] Donna McIvor, Ros Potts, Lucy Wellings, Rachel Pavlou and, of course, Hope Powell.
“Professionally, they understood what it was like to work in that environment as well as the day-to-day. They were really supportive, knowing the game and just really good friends.”
Good friends were also made by Baker in the volunteer community that played - and continues to play - such a vital part in the grassroots of the women’s game, its clubs and the leagues in which they compete.
“I always understood that those who give up their time, effort and expertise to try and help the women's game are incredible people,” enthused Baker.
“They have an enormous passion for the game, about wanting to do the right thing and in the right way for the game. It has been a real privilege to work with some amazing women, in particular.
“I think it's extremely important that we know our story, where we've come from and that people can appreciate that the game is ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ from the past.
“If you don't appreciate the work of volunteers in the past and where the clubs have come from, you miss the whole picture of this incredible family of women's football.”