Supporting MSB Woolton Women with Their New First-Team Kit

This season, we’re supporting MSB Woolton Women’s first team by sponsoring their new match kit, helping the players represent their club as they compete in the North West Women’s Regional League Division One South.

According to the club, the reaction from the players when they first saw the kit said plenty about what it meant to them. Tony from MSB Woolton told us: “You could physically see the excitement on the players’ faces when they first saw the kit.”

And they certainly found a memorable way to mark its first outing, wearing the new kit for an FA Cup match against Blackburn Eagles and coming away with a 10–0 win.

Why are we supporting MSB Woolton Women?

This sponsorship has a particularly strong local connection for us, as our Partner, David Woods, has been involved with Woolton FC for more than 25 years and continues to play an active role within the club.

Through that connection, we have seen just how much work goes on behind the 90 minutes people see on a matchday. There are coaches organising training, volunteers giving up evenings and weekends, families travelling to games and committee members making sure everything is in place to keep teams playing week after week.

For the women’s first team, there are also the increasing costs of pitches, footballs, training equipment, travel and match kit to think about, which is why support from local sponsors can make a genuine difference.

As Tony explained, revenue within the women’s game is improving, but it is still not on the same level as the men’s game, while many of the costs involved in running a football team are much the same.

“Gone are the days of just having an old kit and a ball,” he said. “Nowadays everything costs so much, whether it’s pitch fees, balls, training kit or the actual kit the team plays in.”

What difference has the new kit made?

MSB Woolton Women compete at Tier 6 in the North West Women’s Regional League, sitting above local city leagues and travelling across the region to compete against established teams from across the North West.

When you are representing your club at that level, turning up on a matchday feeling like a proper team matters, and Tony says the new kit has helped give the players that more professional look and feel. It has also helped the team stand out in photographs and across social media during what has already been an eventful FA Cup campaign.

Most importantly, though, the players themselves love wearing it, and Tony said their excitement was obvious from the moment they first saw it.

There is another part of this that we think is particularly important. Young girls from across Woolton FC come along to watch the women’s first team and see players only a few years ahead of them wearing the same badge they pull on for training each week.

For a young player, seeing women from her own club competing in a regional league and representing Woolton in the FA Cup can make the idea of progressing through the club feel much more real.

Role models in sport do not always have to be famous players on television. Sometimes they are the women playing for your own club on a Sunday, warming up on the same pitches, wearing the same badge and showing younger girls where their own football could one day take them.

As Tony put it, watching the women’s team can make a young girl think, “I want to play for the first team in the future.”

That feeling is important because encouraging young people to stay involved in sport is not only about giving them somewhere to train each week. It is also about giving them people to look up to, a sense of belonging and something they can imagine themselves becoming part of as they get older.

For Woolton, the women’s first team is therefore about much more than the results on the pitch. It gives the next generation of girls someone to look up to and, just as importantly, somewhere to aim for.

How did MSB Woolton Women get on in the FA Cup?

The new kit has certainly had an eventful start, with Woolton beginning their Women’s FA Cup campaign with an emphatic 10–0 victory over Blackburn Eagles on 23 August.

Their next tie against Colne on 6 September proved much closer, with the game finishing 3–3 before Woolton held their nerve from the penalty spot to win the shootout 4–1 and progress into the next round.

That result brought further attention to the team, including a mention in The FA’s national round-up of the competition, and gave the players another opportunity to represent Woolton on a wider stage.

Their FA Cup run eventually came to an end against FC St Helens on 20 September, when Woolton were beaten 5–2, but three cup matches still made for a memorable start to the season and gave the team plenty of opportunities to put that new kit to good use.

Why does supporting grassroots women’s football matter?

For us, grassroots sponsorship is about much more than putting our name on the front of a football shirt. It is about helping local clubs meet some of the very real costs involved in keeping teams training, travelling and competing throughout a season.

For MSB Woolton Women, the sponsorship has also helped the first team develop the professional identity the club wants to build, both when the players arrive for games and when people see them representing Woolton online.

Tony told us: “The girls absolutely love the new kit, as do the younger girls from the club that have come to watch us play.”

That probably sums up the impact better than we could. The players wearing the kit now feel proud to represent their club, while younger girls watching from the sidelines can picture themselves wearing it in the future.

A local connection

As a local firm, we want our involvement in communities across Liverpool, Runcorn, Widnes, Huyton, Wirral and Cheshire to go beyond simply having an office nearby, which means supporting some of the clubs and organisations that people within those communities give their time to every week.

Woolton is a particularly good example of that because of David’s long-standing involvement with the club and the connection we already have with the people who keep it running behind the scenes.

We’re pleased to play a small part in supporting MSB Woolton Women this season, and we would like to thank Tony, the players, coaches, committee and everyone involved with the team for their kind words.

Most importantly, we hope the players continue to enjoy wearing the new kit and that plenty more young girls watching from the sidelines get the chance to imagine themselves wearing it one day too.

Visit our news page to see the other community incitatives we have taken part in.