Sunderland Ladies’ double demotion: the questions Baroness Sue Campbell won’t answer

Photo courtesy Sunderland AFC Ladies

Forgive Salut! Sunderland for being appalled at the double demotion of SAFC Ladies, guilty of no wrongdoing, and thus taking another dig at the FA, SAFC and maybe the SAFC Ladies management itself. Since no one has properly explained, no one knows who is most to blame …

As everyone who cares will know, Sunderland AFC Ladies have been handed what amounts to a double demotion, excluded from the Women’s Super League and its second tier despite finishing seventh top at the highest level of the English game.

I regard this as a scandalous affront to natural justice. The FA thinks it is somehow helping “women’s football to grow and prosper in the future”, though it will not explain – specifically – how such grotesquely unjust an exclusion of a successful team fits into this noble ideal.

Baroness Sue Campbell is the FA’s head of the women’s game. She keeps a straight face when claiming the process of deciding who may be included in the WSL, and who must be excluded, is fair and rewards “clubs willing to up their game and commit to the plans”.

Read more

The scandal of seventh-top Sunderland Ladies’ exclusion from the Women’s Super League

Jake says “Ha’way The Lasses”!

It is no secret that Monsieur Salut feels a monstrous miscarriage of natural justice has occurred with the double demotion of Sunderland AFC Ladies who,amid the mess of the parent club, admirably finished last season seventh in the highest tier of women’s football in England, only to be consigned to the lower league.

My analogy? Watford or West Ham, after comparable Premier League seasons, informed they would be in League One from next month. Questions have been put to the FA (earlier ones were answered here) and any response will be reproduced, fairly, in due course.

Here, Ian Todd MBE, a veteran of Sunderland support (men and women) and of the Football Supporters’ Federation and founder of the London and SE branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association, explains the background to a decision that frankly seems cruel and undeserved …

Read more