The Reading Reporter, a reader-funded Substack newsletter written and produced by former MailOnline Assistant Sports Editor Chris Cutmore, has just published two brilliant pieces on the fall and rise of Reading FC Women.

Football in Berkshire has been granted permission to reproduce an extract from the first piece, which details Emma Hopkins – winner of Football in Berkshire’s Darrel Freeland Award in the summer – fight to keep women’s football alive at the Royals over the chaotic summer of 2024.

The full piece (linked below after the extract), includes comments from 19-year-old team captain Mia Parker, Poppy Whitburn and Ellie Luscombe who had previously been at the club’s Academy, how Rick Catania and Alec Lundberg became the team’s co-owners at board level and a lifeline from Slough Town.

A second piece published this week features an emotional interview with manager Ed Jackson-Norris who describes how football coaching quite literally saved his life.

The Reading Reporter is a paywall site, but if big Reading features and inside stories from the future of Reading Prison to the untold story of the Purple Turtle, and Reading’s strangest pub are your thing, it’s well worth taking a look and subscribing.

EXTRACT:

Reading were a fixture in the FA Women’s Super League for almost a decade from 2014, finishing as high as fourth in 2018, and produced England players such as Fran Kirby – a European champion with England’s Lionesses in 2022.

But in June 2024 it was announced that the women’s team would withdraw from the Championship, taking a voluntary demotion all the way down to the fifth tier due to financial hardship.

The entire club was gripped by an existential crisis – put up for sale by Yongge but struggling to find a buyer, in freefall on and off the pitch having failed to pay bills, wages and the tax man.

The women’s team – and several of the girls’ academy age groups – were cut from the club’s budget, all but disowned.

“This move undermines our Club’s integrity and the progress of women’s football,” said Supporters’ Trust at Reading (STAR) at the time. “(This) affects our community, gender equality and our club’s heritage.”

It was, admits Hopkins, “a really tricky summer”.

“Yongge didn’t want to fund the women’s team, so all the full-time staff members, the contractors, the players – everybody had to move on.

“Just at the drop of a hat, your job was non-existent.”

But Hopkins fought, and found a lifeline.

“I was very fortunate that the manager of the Community Trust was willing to take me back, so I could continue to work here in some capacity.”

That manager is Dave Evans. Hopkins was made head of women and girls’ football. Together they faced the bleak future.

“We spent a lot of time speaking about why we can’t just let the women’s team disappear completely. That would have been a disaster.

“Thankfully after a lot of begging from me, he was willing to move the team across to the Community Trust and operate it under their banner.

“It was a case of, can we just get 11 players out on the pitch and get through the season so the team can somehow continue?”

The Trust covered the costs, while a “very marginal” amount of funding from the club paid for kit and other essentials. The team clung on, just, for two years.

But the damage went deeper. The girls’ academy took a huge hit.

Dropping to Tier 5 meant sacrificing the Professional Game Academy Licence, and the FA funding that came with it. The Under 21s team was scrapped, leaving some players without a club. Around 40 players, including the professionals, had to leave.

Hopkins, raised in Mortimer and with roots in Reading, had been overseeing girls’ development and coaching age groups since 2016. The club she helped build was crumbling around her – but she clung on.

“It was essential to keep a first team, but also the opportunities for girls. We managed to continue with two academy teams, which I think was probably our biggest success in that time.

“There was still a pathway that girls could come through and there was a first team that they could still aspire to be a part of.

“I’m extremely grateful to Dave and those guys for stepping in during those dark times.”

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