Kicking the Issues: The (Personal) Price of Professionalism?

Behind a fully professional league are the women who kept the game going before it and cannot meet the hours it now demands. Carrie Dunn sets out the criteria – sixteen hours of daytime contact a week in tier one, rising to twenty; eight in tier two – and then the human arithmetic. Steph Bannon retired at twenty-nine because she could no longer teach and play properly at once, and describes a life that had become work, training, bed, five days solid. Ellie Curson found full-time terms unaffordable and the accommodation was student halls. Michelle Hinnigan was twenty-seven when Everton went full-time and says the decision was made for her. Helen Ward asks only that the latest restructure be given time.