Maybe I was being a little harsh when I posted part one of this.
The legacy is that Lions women became the first British side to win a European tournament. That shouldn’t be sniffed at. How many of the near capacity crowd at the Box really appreciated the magnitude of that is questionable, but I never thought I’d see such a thing. I won’t belittle it by saying it’s “only” the second tier or commenting on the budget, it’s a massive achievement and no club achieves such success without spending a proper amount of money.
But the fact that the announcement that they were massively scaling down the women’s programme came before they’d won the thing pretty much killed the idea of legacy. When you know it’s a flash in the pan even before it’s flashed it really does take something away from it. I’m unconvinced there was any need for that, even if it had been an open secret in the WBBL for a while, I find it a bit disappointing in football that the only point in wining a title seems to be getting promoted, so I won’t knock winning for the sake of winning, but already knowing that you’re not going to even bother trying to repeat at the same level the following year seems a little bit pointless.
They almost have a * next to their name as they’ll make an effort to defend their title, let alone build on it and move up to EuroLeague.
The fact that Lions are apparently going to spend even more on the men’s team next year just rubs salt into the wound. The women’s programme costs a fraction of the men’s and delivered a history-making success.
It’s not up to me to tell 777 how to spend their money. Though it’s not actually “their” money, it belongs to the investors. Assuming it actually exists. But perhaps the biggest disappointment in this is that they haven’t put the women’s team up for sale. They’ve actually built something fairly tangible by having a women’s programme that is a success in Europe. Compared to what it costs to be success as a men’s team in Europe the numbers are quite small, and with the big Premier League clubs having now monopolised the women’s game in football, it’s actually a team that someone with an interest in women’s sport might be willing to invest in. The rumour is 777 turned down flat an enquiry from someone wanting to own/fund the women. Whether that’s true or not – and my source is decent – there’s certainly been no public suggestion they would be willing to sell. It’s as if they don’t want anyone to make more of a success of it than they have. Even though they would still be the organisation that got them to this point. Even though they could save some face with a minority shareholding.
It seems a massive shame that, having got to the point of giving London a European title winning team (and West Ham have happily been singing “champions of Europe” all season, the fact it’s not the top flight isn’t overly relevant) no one will ever know if they couldn’t have taken it further or at least been a successful franchise at the level them won at this season.
What a waste.
It’s worth mentioning that the younger girls (ie the U-14/12s) at Wolves simply don’t get it. They seem genuinely let down that a successful women’s side are being broken up after they’ve done so well. They think the richest club in the country simply don’t give a shit about the women’s game. That would be tough to argue against.
Sadly the legacy is going to be a bog standard WBBL team – at best. The big plan is – apparently – to start an academy (they had one of them, they told them to piss off) and generate work for their players and somewhere to play. Basically they’re going adopt the model most other WBBL clubs have – the exact model 777 mocked and said would take British basketball nowhere. Ironic, considering they’ve just taken their club from being European champions to nowhere.
daveballblog 