Western Springs AFC offered strategy from ex-Football Fern Rebecca Sowden

2022 National League runners-up, Western Springs. Photo / photosport.nz

A former Football Fern has offered to help Western Springs AFC build a strategy for the women’s and girls’ game, saying disputes at the club over gender equality are a “dampener” ahead of the Fifa World Cup.

Rebecca Sowden, an 11-cap Football Fern and advocate for women in sport, said it would be a “huge loss for everyone” if the club’s premier women players carried out their ultimatum to walk away from the game “with the World Cup just on our doorstep”.

Players have said they felt “completely disrespected” by the “highly misogynistic behaviour” of the predominantly male board and club management.

Sowden said: “I’ve worked on Visa Europe and [World Cup sponsor] Xero women’s football strategies globally and I’m offering up my services – free of charge – to help with that women and girls strategy if the club wants it.

“Hopefully between a number of parties, we can get everyone back on track ... and moving forward.”

She said a player walkout “would be devastating for all parties”.

“Clubs need to stop looking at it as a kind of zero-sum game,” she said, and instead “look at everything holistically”.

Rebecca Sowden says this issue goes beyond Western Springs. Photo / Dean Purcell

“For me, this is a prime example of a lot of these issues at club level is ... people too often go, ‘oh, the men are pulling in this money’.”

She said that whatever funding is received for facility upgrades should be “benefiting the whole club, and across juniors, across the men’s team and the women’s team – this is how clubs need to view it.”

“I think this perfect example where we’ve got the women’s World Cup and the women’s team benefiting the men’s side of the game.

“It’s a two-way street,” she said. “The growth of the women’s game could benefit Western Springs Juniors enormously in terms of revenue and popularity.”

Western Springs is set to be a training base for the Norwegian team during the World Cup. The club’s facilities reportedly received a Government-funded $800,000 upgrade ahead of the tournament.

However, players at the club told the Herald their teams would often be the “last choice” for training and matches on the club’s No 1 artificial field. They said the senior men’s team would typically get the first choice to use the better facilities.

One player told the Herald at the weekend: “We’re all over the place because our fields get torn up. We don’t get to play on field one if the men are on there – things like that really start to build up over the years.”

Sowden said these issues are common and “not only at Western Springs”.

“All clubs across the country can just take stock of their own internal makeup of boards and their own policies.”

Rebecca Sowden is offering her expertise free of charge. Photo / Photosport

But she said the Springs players were “brave” to speak up and “whatever the girls are feeling is real to them”. She hopes the standoff with the club “can act as a catalyst for change”.

Springs players have engaged a lawyer ahead of mediation with the club this week. They are due to play top-of-the-table Auckland United on Friday night at the home grounds, Seddon Fields.

Sowden said: “A lot of things can get lost in translation ... in an ideal world it would be resolved before even going public.”

Sowden understood it seemed to be a “build-up of everything that resulted in them creating this drastic situation” but offers her expertise in fixing it.

Western Springs has been approached for comment.