It is possible that no win at all will be needed for Sunderland Ladies in their final game to complete a sensational promotion at the first attempt and join the elite of the Women’s Super League top flight.
Unfortunately, that would be the case only if the one team able to overtake them, Doncaster Rovers Belles, lost. And they are at London Bees, hived off from the rest of the swarm at the very bottom of WSL2.
Our own Lasses would therefore suffer very nasty sting in the tail, if that is not an unchivalrous extension of the pun, if they cannot win their last game, also away on London, against third-bottom Millwall Lionesses at The Den.
Doncaster won their game in hand in midweek, a comfortable 2-0 home victory against Yeovil, to take the promotion issue to the final day. They have a better goal difference, so beating the Bees would mean even a draw at Millwall would be insufficient for Sunderland.
Let the SAFC Supporters’ Association London and SE branch, sponsors of Sunderland AFC Ladies tell the story, quoting from the lasses’ message to members:
SAFC Ladies invite you to join them at The Den, Zampa Road SE16 3LN
at 2pm on Sunday 26th October for their game against Millwall LionessesThe maths is simple! Three points in this final game of their season will mean Sunderland win their league for the 4th consecutive year, the difference being that this time there will be a nailed-on benefit of promotion to Division 1 of the FA Women’s Super League.
The team’s General Manager [Sonia Kulkarni] has said: ‘We have had a lot of support on our away games, particularly from the members of the Wear Down South SAFC supporters’ branch and the players and staff are hoping to enjoy that support in London at the weekend. We are very grateful and I know that it gives the girls a real boost.’
As members will be aware, the Branch has sponsored the Ladies’ team for the last two seasons so we now have a chance to manifest that support with human presence and loud Ha’ways. You will be impressed with the quality of the football and most certainly see more effort than was evident at St. Mary’s last Saturday!
For those who’ve not previously been to The Den, there is an adjacent station South Bermondsey to which trains run from London Bridge every 15 minutes on the quarter hour with a journey time of just 10 minutes. The nearest tube station is Surrey Quays.
Finally Millwall are demonstrating that they do really care by offering half-price tickets for adult Lady Black Cats fans. These can be obtained by logging onto https://sales.webticketmanager.com/mlfc before Friday 24th October and using the promotional code sunderland1.
Let’s show the London Branch at its numerical strength and best for this crucial game!
And this is how the table looks …
Pos Team Pl W D L GF GA Pts
1 Sunderland AFC Ladies 17 14 2 1 43 15 44
2 Doncaster Rovers Belles 17 13 3 1 47 14 42
3 Reading FC Women 17 12 2 3 57 21 38
4 Aston Villa Ladies FC 17 8 3 6 23 26 27
5 Yeovil Town Ladies FC 17 6 3 8 26 25 21
6 Watford Ladies FC 17 5 3 9 22 34 18
7 Durham Women FC 17 5 2 10 18 31 17
8 Millwall Lionesses 17 4 3 10 20 32 15
9 Oxford United Women 17 3 3 11 16 42 12
10 London Bees 17 2 2 13 16 48 8
* Check the Sunderland AFC Ladies website at http://www.sunderlandwfc.co.uk/
Vote for Salut! Sunderland in the Football Blogging Awards: see https://safc.blog/2014/09/football-blogging-awards-make-your-yes-vote-count-for-salut-sunderland/for details
Good luck for today ladies, hope you do it and restore some pride to these red n white stripes that our multi millionaire proffessional men’s team failed to do .