Bolton Wanderers Women creating a 'little piece of history'

Half an hour before speaking to The Bolton News, team manager Myles Smith had learned the club’s opponents in this weekend’s penultimate pre-season friendly had pulled out, leaving them scrambling for a game.

It was a first for Smith – whose career in football to date has been largely at the more glamorous end of the game with Manchester United, West Ham and Saudi club Al-Ittihad, but also a good lesson that, for now at least, they will need to expect the unexpected.

“That’s the part that will get a little bit of getting used to,” he said. “It is part of the game at this level in women’s football at the moment, and we kind of have to embrace that.

“Some things can’t be helped and we just have to move with it and make the best things happen from our side.

“It’s a little bit of complexity thrown into the mix at the last minute, but we’ll do our best now to find a game for Sunday and then we have one more game the following weekend, and that will be us, season starts.”

Preparations for the new season, which starts on Sunday, August 18, have gone smoothly for the relaunched team, who will be competing at the sixth tier of women’s football this season with a view to climbing the pyramid as quickly as possible.

The first official friendly saw a 5-0 win against Atherton LR at Lostock and the squad, picked primarily from three trials at the start of the summer but now being supplemented with signings from elsewhere, is starting to develop.

Talk of rapid promotions has created some expectation on what is still a brand-new venture but Smith is keen for his team not to start running before they have walked.

“For us, the most important thing is progression,” he said. “The biggest step we can make this year is to be promoted but we finished lower to mid-table last season, some 35 points off the leaders, so it is a big gap to make up. All we can do is push as close as we can.

“We want improvement. We want to create an environment we are really proud of, first and foremost, and that is going well so far. The results will come off the back of it.

“There was a women’s team set up before but what we have transformed it into now in a short space of time is remarkable, to be honest.

“Some of the players who have been brought in, some of them we are speaking to at the moment, what we are offering to the players and the support they get and the top staff they are working with not only on the football side but the medical, analysis and sports science team too, it is completely different, and that is the progress I am talking about.

“If we continue to foster that environment from our side, it is all we can do, then it is over to the players.”

Bolton Wanderers Women launched their new kit this week (Image: Newsquest)

Wanderers will go into the new season boasting facilities and support that a lot of their competitors will envy and that has enabled the club to attract a calibre of player who may not have ordinarily considered playing in the lower reaches of the women’s game.

“We have had people come in from higher levels, well-known clubs around the WSL, and they have said ‘wow’ and they have been impressed with what we are doing,” he said.

“I have spoken to a few coaches at this level but I can’t say I know exactly what everyone is offering to their players and what facilities they have – so I can only go off other people’s words, and they have been that nobody is doing anything like this anywhere around us.

“We are proud of what we are going.”

Wanderers Women will wear their own kit this season, sponsored by Domis Construction, with the club organising a special launch which Smith felt was another reminder of how seriously they are taking the relaunch.

“It was brilliant,” he said. “The whole club worked hard to make that happen.

“Getting the girls in on that day, we did a couple of player signings, doing the photoshoot, we made sure they got fed because there was a gym training session that evening, there was media stuff in the afternoon for a couple of hours – it was similar to the sort of thing you’d have as a professional player. It is nice for them to feel like that.

“The kits look great and everything we’re doing at the moment is a little piece of history. Everyone at the club, men’s or women’s, should be proud of that. We’re writing it day by day, week by week.

“I was busy when the announcement went out but when I got back I had a load of notifications and someone in Australia dropped me a message to say they had purchased a shirt and that her six or seven-year-old daughter was going to be wearing it. And that’s incredible.

“We are not only helping Bolton Wanderers but we are helping to grow and improve the women’s game.”