Leeds Carnegie Ladies / Leeds United Ladies / Leeds Ladies FC

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LADIES WELCOME TWO NEW SIGNINGS

04 Sep 2018


A warm welcome to Sophie Stamp and Oda Sperre Tennfjord...



Oda Sperre Tennfjord

-          Oda has recently been playing in Norway’s second tier of women’s football for Fortuna Aalesund.

-          Oda and her family are big Leeds United fans and so she is thrilled to begin this new chapter of her career.

Overskeift fra Sunnmørsposten på nettet:
Oda (21) fra Tennfjord har skrevet under for Leeds: â€" Onklene mine blir i hvert fall fornøyd
Oda Sperre Tennfjord fra Fortuna skal snart debutere for Leeds United Ladies på nivå fire i England.


En 'pluss-artikkel' som jeg regner med at noen sunnmøringer kan lime inn teksten fra.  

https://smp.alda.no/bestillpluss?1&artRefId=SND-sport-261243&aviskode=SPO&targetUrl=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.smp.no%252F%253Fservice%253DpaywallRedirect%2526articleUrl%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.smp.no%252F100Sport%252Ffotball%252FOda-21-fra-Tennfjord-har-skrevet-under-for-Leeds--Onklene-mine-blir-i-hvert-fall-fornoyd-261243b.html

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Oda Sperre Tennfjord has received international clearance and will make her debut in this Sundays FA cup match at Alnwick Town

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Leeds-Live med intervju med Lucy Ward.

...plasserer det her. Kunne tatt det i Neil Redfearn-tråden, står allerede en del om henne der, eller akademitrådene som pleide å være fylt av stoff om henne.

Anyways, for de som er ukjent med navnet, hun var kanskje den første store stjernen på Leeds' kvinnelag, selv om hun bare nådde U21-landslagsnivå. Hun begynte som lærer for akademigutta til Leeds men avanserte raskt som 'sjef' (for det som ikke hadde med det sportslige å gjøre).

Så ble hun sammen med Neil Redfearn. Og det brukte Massimo Cellino for det han kunne, ved å ramme henne rammet han Neil!

Og så er hun kjent for å spille i Lucas Radebes testimonial - og selvsagt scoret hun.

Nå kommenterer hun fotballkamper!


Anyways, over til Leeds-Live

'No excuses for Leeds' - Lucy Ward talks career, regrets and why Whites must have women's team
Lucy Ward speaks exclusively to Leeds Live about her career in football on and off the pitch


By Carrie Dunn 19:00, 30 MAR 2021


Lucy Ward (right) on BT Sport commentary duty

Lucy Ward has travelled the world thanks to football. She's commentated on matches across the globe, and is a familiar face and voice to anyone who watches the game on television in the UK.

Her career in Leeds United's academy set-up, heading up their education and welfare provision for young players, has been well documented.

But the 46-year-old also has a proud playing career behind her – and its highlight was a rather unexpected one.

"The biggest high was playing in Lucas Radebe's testimonial," she tells Leeds Live. "40,000 people at Elland Road and I scored, and it was unbelievable."

A cursory glance over her playing honours might suggest that the 2006 Women's FA Cup final, where she represented Leeds against the mighty Arsenal, could have been a treasured memory. But as a winger playing out of position, Ward scored an own goal after just three minutes had passed at The Den, and United were on their way to a 5-0 thrashing.


Ward was a part of the Leeds United Ladies side that lost to Arsenal Ladies in the 2006 Women's FA Cup final
"Obviously we were never really going to beat Arsenal because they were strides ahead of us," says Ward. "But I just could not get my head round how hard I'd worked as a youngster and how hard I'd worked as a senior player - and then I ended up in an FA Cup Final playing out of position and then scoring an own goal. I just couldn't get my head round the absolute misfortune and travesty.

"And it's only then that you realise that football will quite happily kick you in the teeth at any particular point."

Ward began playing football as a child at primary school, motivated to kick a ball by wanting to beat her older brother, two years her senior.

The pair ended up playing in the same primary school team, on the opposite wings. After the age of 11, she was no longer allowed to play in mixed teams, and with no girls' team at her secondary school, Rodillion in Wakefield, she just made do with PE lessons – until she saw an advert for an eight-week girls' football course at Guiseley Sports Centre.

The coach there spotted Ward's talent, and invited her to join a women's team – where the players nearest her age were 19 years old. The rest of the squad looked after their youngest member, who also achieved regional recognition very quickly, called up to the north-east representative team with the likes of Huddersfield-born Sammy Britton, who went on to play for England.

Ward's own international career stopped after her England under-21 caps, and she wonders now if she could have done more with her talent.

"Because I was quite naturally sporty, I didn't really train like obviously they train now," says Ward.

"And that's the one regret that I have - that I didn't have somebody that had gone, 'Right!' because sport had come so easily I played and enjoyed it whereas really I should have stepped away from that group of players or that team quite early and gone and played at a high level, but I loved it that much and loved them that much that I stayed until I went to university."

Ward stayed with Leeds for most of her playing career, although the women's club changed hands and officials multiple times.

It F***ed well with her day job after graduating from university, working in the men's club's education department, initially as a teacher and then its head. She maintains that is a role she would not have been considered for had she not taught the academy players for the previous six years and seen them progress into the first team.

"I was quite lucky with that, because I don't actually think a woman would have got that role at that point," she explains. "I was well known and it was just, you know, 'It's Lucy, she's brilliant, we love her.'"

That was in 2004, and she stayed there until 2015, when she departed and then pursued and won a well-publicised court case against the club for unfair dismissal based on sex discrimination. In the intervening years, she helped mould the academy players into the club's stars of the future and found herself working almost constantly alongside her partner Neil Redfearn, initially the under-18s coach and then the under-21s.

"The pastoral side of it is key, it was the sort of thing that I still did with lads who had left the academy and got into the first team," she recalls. "Whenever they had issues, I would be the first person they would come to...I used to say that my job was probably everything apart from football, but the everything that wasn't about football made the football better.

"If it was up to me, every single lad would get a contract...but I was there for them when they didn't."

Although she had done a spot of punditry on Eurosport previously, her media career took off in 2005 when she was having dinner with her old Leeds team-mate Sue Smith and Karen Walker of Doncaster Belles, both of whom had been working as summarisers for the BBC during the Women's Euros.

They were joined by some of the television production team, who were impressed with Ward's articulacy and personality – and got in touch months later to invite her to be the main co-commentator for the forthcoming 2007 Women's World Cup in China.

"All this is from maybe me having a glass of wine and being a bit loud and unusually funny around the dinner table!" laughs Ward. "I ended up going to China - never commentated before and then all of a sudden I'm commentating for the BBC and the millions watching so that was quite a baptism of fire."

She enjoyed the experience so much she contacted as many producers as she could to offer her services in the future – and since then she has worked for Sky, BT, Channel 4, Setanta and ESPN and more.

"It's only recently that I've gone and done a men's game but I think that's probably because I'm not really a name like Alex Scott, I've not played 100 times for England, so I had to do it the hard way and actually prove that I can actually co-comm and so it's brilliant for me, really awesome," she says.

Although she was an Everton fan in childhood, Ward loves to watch Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds side now, despite the circumstances in which she left the club – and she wishes the hierarchy would invest in the women's game.

"It always pains me, because it's an absolute drop in the ocean, the money," she says.

"Even in these COVID times it's peanuts, really, they've dropped more money running for a bus, these clubs, so there's no excuse for Leeds not having a top women's team. There isn't any excuse - they just don't want to spend the money, and that goes for any men's clubs that haven't put money into a women's team."


And as for that nadir of the 2006 Women's FA Cup Final, it turned out to have a rather touching epilogue, thanks to the Leeds men.

"Football clubs are the harshest places for banter," she says, "and I thought, 'I don't think I can face going in and the players making fun of me.'

"Anyway, I went in and I was like, 'This is going to be painful and I don't think I can deal with it.' I went in my office, and one by one the first-team players came in and said, 'You think that's bad. Look what happened to me,' and then another one would come in – 'You think that's bad. This happened to me.'

"And they just came in and told me their stories...it actually was probably the most touching part.

"I always say to score an own goal in an FA Cup final you have to have played in an FA Cup final, if anybody ever takes the mickey. It was typical of the football club how they rallied around me in their own way after that."

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/lucy-ward-leeds-women-regrets-20286210

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Kom over denne på twitter akkurat nå

https://twitter.com/LUFC/status/1426891199181434880?s=20

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Kom over denne på twitter akkurat nå

https://twitter.com/LUFC/status/1426891199181434880?s=20

Seiersmålet (1-0) kom i det 89.minutt, mot Stockport (4.nivå, avdeling nord).
Fine representanter for klubben vår, så ut som flott lagfølelse dem imellom.

[Lucas the Kop Cat]

Stusser litt på at denne tråden ligger under "Off Topic".

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Stusser litt på at denne tråden ligger under "Off Topic".

True - handler nok om at Bates sørget for at laget en tid ikke sorterte under Leeds United men universitetet. Han kastet de jo ut av klubben for å spare (små-)penger - en tid da laget var i toppdivisjonen og vel hadde 4 eller 6 i landslaget/landslagsdiskusjonen... 
Plutselig var de Leeds Carnagie Ladies...

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1-0 seier over Liverpool (Feds), første målet Liverpool har conceded all season!

Flora Snelson
@FloraSnelsonYEP

Replying to
@FloraSnelsonYEP
FT 1-0 Hard work earns Leeds the three points, slowly grinding down a Feds side content to settle for a draw. GK Darbyshire unbothered by a flurry of long range shots in the final 15 but couldn't stop Brown finishing what was really Leeds' first dangerous move of the game.

Målet
https://twitter.com/LUFC/status/1434529330428878853?s=20

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Naw. Se hvem som kommer 'hjem'


https://twitter.com/Barts_16/status/1692951141829538205?s=20

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DETTE emnet har vært et sorgens kapittel i en del år nå...

Det har ikke alltid vært slik. Vi vant cupen og var nr 4 i serien det påfølgende året da herrene Bates og Cellino i tur og orden valgte å ikke satse på laget.
I det siste har man vært på 4.nivå, det ble sagt å være en slags ny satsing på laget for et drøyt år siden eller så, men klatringen oppover i seriesystemet har latt vente på seg...

Ikke rart, da det bare er tabellvinneren som rykker opp.

Er det bedring i sikte?
Kanskje, men det er langt igjen. De ligger på tredjeplass, men det er bare poenget opp til lederlaget.

Over til The Athletic som forteller:
Leeds United have a rich history in women's football, with England internationals Steph Houghton, Ellen White, Carly Telford and Jade Moore among their former players. However, having previously competed as a top-flight team, they withdrew their bid to join the new Women's Super League (WSL) in 2010 due to a lack of funding.

The women's team then ceased to exist in 2014 under Leeds' owner at the time, Massimo Cellino. Reformed as a separate entity named Leeds Ladies FC, the side were eventually brought back under the umbrella of Leeds United in 2017, during Andrea Radrizzani's ownership.

Som trådtitlene forteller. Etter at Leeds United droppet laget ble de en del av Leeds Carnegie University, så uavhengige Leeds Ladies, før Radrizzani tok imot dem innad i Leeds United-paraplyen igjen.

Eg dulgte de bra tett i en periode rundt cupgullet, men Lacy Ward, Sue Smith (begge de to har gjort karriere innen media i etterkant av karrieren), Lucy Ward, 'fru Neil Redfearn' som hun jo er, drev jo klubben sammen med partneren en periode i Cellino-tiden, hun som utdanningssjef på akademiet, han som manager. Mye kunne blitt skrevet om rettsakene der. Men anyways...

As the women's game in the UK has moved to a new professional era, Leeds have rebuilt, with the past two seasons representing a new evolution of the team under manager Simon Wood.

"We had success a few years ago by winning a national competition, the National League Plate (for clubs below the WSL and the second-tier Championship)," Wood says. "I came in last year and we had a bit of a rebuild to do. We did big recruitment in the summer, brought in some good players, and we're hoping they push us on this year.

"The backing we get from the football club means our aspiration should be to play in a higher league. We're currently third in the league, one point behind the leaders, so we're in a really good position. This is a perfect time to go to Elland Road with everyone feeling high."

Wood is a lifelong Leeds fan who first had a season-ticket in 1991-92, when Howard Wilkinson led the men's team to the title in English football's final pre-Premier League campaign. With the men chasing a return to the top flight under counterpart Daniel Farke, he says it is vital the women's team are seen as part of the wider club.

"In the summer, during recruitment, to bring players to Elland Road and share our ambitions with them is huge," he says. "When we bring players to the training facility at Thorp Arch and they can see we share it with the men's team and the academy, they see that what we have got there is really special.

"We make sure the players are aware that the support they get is not given to all the clubs in this league, but they know they need to respond in performance. This season, we're seeing that."

Smith is one of the players thriving this season amid competition from those new arrivals.

The 31-year-old is an experienced member of the team and is closing in on her 100th Leeds United appearance as well as being the team's leading goalscorer. Like the rest of Wood's squad, she is semi-pro and works alongside her football career, splitting her time between playing and working as a football development manager for the Manchester FA.

"The competition is there in the squad and the standard has gone up," she says. "We've recruited really well and that makes the players in the team step up their game. The standard has really improved and the consistency is there.

"It's unusual, we have so many service professionals with day jobs, where they work shifts. We have police, fire, medical staff, so it can be really hard to get a consistent number at training. With the new injection we've had that (regular numbers at training), which is why we've seen an improvement this season."

Hele artikkelen er her:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5914308/2024/11/16/leeds-united-women-elland-road/#:~:text=Come%20Sunday%2C%20Smith,with%20three%20points.%E2%80%9D

PS! Ingen grunn til at dette emnet er off topic lenger

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...skumleste gjennom tråden nå. Og midt på side to uttaler manager Gemma Grainger seg.

Hun er nå norsk landslagssjef.

[Hallgeir *]

Kamp på Elland Road mot York (LUTV) akkurat nå.

[Lucas the Kop Cat]

Kamp på Elland Road mot York (LUTV) akkurat nå.

2-0 etter første omgang

Sent fra min LE2113 via Tapatalk

[Hallgeir *]

Bra spill de første 25-30 minuttene av første omgang. Da var Leeds ganske overlegne. Deretter skiftet kampen karakter, og York hadde 2-3 store sjanser til å redusere/utligne.

Andre omgang jevnere med mer kjemping enn godt spill. Kampen punktert rett før slutt med 3-0. Bra oppmøte med 4801 tilskuere.

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Tabellen ser straks hyggeligere ut. Toppen
Cheadle Town   11 kamper 22 poeng, pluss 14
Leeds Utd         10 kamper 22 poeng, pluss 10
Middlesbrough 10 kamper 21 poeng, pluss 9
...

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Her er 1:01 minutt for de som ikke så kampen-

Vil si det sånn at Leeds vel ikke har hatt bedre tvillinger på laget siden Rod og Ray   Wallace

Drew & Darcie Greene

https://x.com/LUFCwomen/status/1858515177576026569