Issue
November 2017 37 articles indexed
Read She Kicks issue 44 in full
Column / Opinion p.3
Jen O'Neill opens on the Eniola Aluko affair and says she has agonised over how to cover it, concluding readers already know the facts. Her own position she states plainly: the utmost admiration for…
News pp.4–7
The news pages are dominated by the FA's announcement that from 2018-19 the top flight will hold up to fourteen fully professional clubs, with a new semi-professional national league beneath it - the restructuring…
News p.6
She Kicks sets out, without commentary, a dated chronology of how a player with 102 England caps was reluctantly pushed into the spotlight and a manager with a near-four-year tenure lost his job for…
Tournament feature p.8
A single page covers the whole international window and catches England mid-upheaval: a 6-0 defeat of Russia at Tranmere, Jodie Taylor scoring at her first club, turns out to have been Mark Sampson's last…
Tournament feature p.10
Chelsea survive a nail-biting finish in Munich to eliminate Bayern on away goals and draw Rosengard, where Anita Asante awaits; Manchester City brush past St Polten home and away and get Lillestrom. Glasgow City's…
Run-of-page feature pp.12–14
The FA's annual awards night at the Grosvenor House Hotel produces a full roll-call from the England squad down to grassroots, and She Kicks prints the lot alongside the winners' own reactions. Jodie Taylor…
Interview pp.16–18
Megan Campbell signed for Manchester City in February 2016 and then lost most of two years to ankle ligament damage, a torn quad and a more serious ankle injury that cost her eight months.…
Other pp.17–27
Ten Opta statistics from the opening weeks of the 2017-18 WSL 1 season, run as hashtagged sidebars down the margins of the issue's first half rather than as a spread. Karen Carney has created…
Interview p.18
Eight weeks after scoring in a Euro final her side lost 4-2 to the hosts, Nadia Nadim agreed to join Manchester City in January from the newly crowned NWSL champions Portland Thorns. She is…
Interview pp.19–21
Maria Thorisdottir actually chose handball. She played both to eighteen, left Stavanger for professional handball in Oslo, and came back to football in 2014 only because jumper's knee is ruinous for a sport built…
Interview p.21
Among nominees for the North West Women's Player of the Year who include Lucy Bronze and Caroline Weir, one name came as a surprise to everyone including its owner. Jamie-Lee McDowell is nineteen and…
Interview pp.22–24
Bristol fans knew within six minutes of Lauren Hemp's WSL debut, aged sixteen, that something was happening. A year on she is a first-team regular in WSL 1 at seventeen, England's Young Player of…
Interview p.25
Hannah Dale has been at Liverpool since the Under-14s and had cameo roles in two title-winning seasons, but a long-term loan to Sheffield FC, now extended to May 2018, was the cutting of the…
Other pp.26–27
Two pages of photographs from the first five weeks of the 2017-18 WSL season, running from 24 September to 30 October, captioned entirely in hashtags. The spread marks a change of rhythm as much…
Column / Opinion p.28
Helen Ward opens by pretending life has been quiet: she had a baby in September, returned to training with Watford, and went to Russia with Wales. Her son Charlie was born on 7 September…
Other p.29
Jess Holland supported Leeds as a child and now plays for them, having joined from Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield Town in the summer that Leeds Ladies became Leeds United Ladies. Wearing the white shirt and…
News p.30
A third of the way into the winter season, Middlesbrough lead the Northern Division from Leicester City though Blackburn have yet to drop a point, and Charlton are seven clear in the Southern despite…
Interview pp.30–31
In nine seasons at Blackpool Wren Rovers Nikki Berko scored around 450 goals, including 91 in a treble-winning campaign, and even in the season the club went down she managed thirty - enough to…
Poster pp.32–33
A double-page photographic tribute to Alex Scott, who announced her England retirement after 140 caps and added that this would be her last season with Arsenal. The spread is built around a close-up of…
Interview pp.34–35
Rachel Corsie took the call from Shelley Kerr in Seattle after a comedy of missed calls and time differences, and had to sit on the news for a fortnight. She succeeds a captain in…
Column / Opinion p.36
Hibernian's captain joins the She Kicks writing team and opens with a season that has already held a great deal: the top of the Scottish league at the halfway point, a League Cup retained…
Other p.37
Grace Lawther is eleven, plays in defence for Boroughmuir Thistle Under-11s and for her school, and supports Raith Rovers and Scotland - the same young fan photographed in the previous issue collecting selfies in…
Run-of-page feature pp.38–41
Birmingham City applied to be founder members of the Women's Super League in 2009 with eight pounds in the bank, on a chairman's instinct that they should go for it anyway. Eight years on,…
Run-of-page feature pp.42–45
Since 2000 there have been thirteen World Cups, Olympics and European Championships, and only one was won by a male coach. Glenn Moore lays that record beside the opposite imbalance in opportunity - six…
Interview pp.46–48
Melanie Copeland - the former Melanie Reay, newly married to her partner Chris - is building a squad on the wrong side of the WSL's haves and have-nots, and is clear about what she…
Interview pp.47–48
Sunderland's head coach answers the Coach Kicks questions and picks a passing drill as her favourite to deliver, on the sound grounds that a team that can pass has a chance of doing it…
Interview pp.49–51
Jackie Groenen was the fulcrum of a Dutch side that won all six games at their home European Championship, having had no senior caps before the previous year, and she plays with an ease…
Run-of-page feature pp.52–53
Liverpool and England's centre back sets out the position from the inside, and the emphasis falls as much on possession as on defending. A centre back's job, she argues, is to keep the ball…
Interview p.54
The winner of She Kicks's September boot giveaway is not allowed to collect the prize without answering for the rest of her kit. Harriet Coles, a Leeds United Ladies goalkeeper, remembers her first pair…
Interview pp.54–55
Oxford United's attacking midfielder describes a match day built on porridge and banana, plenty of water and a losing battle with coffee. In the changing room there is a playlist, conversation, and often a…
Interview p.55
Tottenham's goalkeeper, in her first WSL season after promotion and an Arsenal supporter by upbringing, takes the car questions in good part. She drives a Ford Fiesta, the only car she has never named,…
Other p.56
Two players take five quickfire questions each and give away more than the format suggests. Doncaster's Welsh defender Rhiannon Roberts picks David Beckham, a ground in China called the Bamboo Stadium, a Blackburn Rovers…
Interview p.57
England's Under-19 captain describes an approach built on one rule she returns to throughout: she is a player before she is a captain, and has no right to the armband if she is not…
Interview p.58
Wales and Yeovil's goalkeeper had just been named FAW Women's Player of the Year and calls it a total shock, given how short a time she has been in the position at all -…
Interview p.59
Yasmin Saeed swapped shin pads for a whistle while rehabilitating an injury that ended her playing career, and at nineteen is a Level 5 referee officiating open-age and academy football for both men and…
News p.60
Liverpool County FA sets out a season in which two hundred female teams affiliated, from Under-7s to adults and including disability sides - the highest number the county has recorded. Behind it sits GBP…
Other p.62
The issue signs off with two puzzles built entirely out of dressing rooms. The first asks readers to identify six WSL 1 and 2 clubs from photographs of their changing facilities alone, the answers…
