ABOUT

Hi everyone, my name is Duncan and I’m a Brighton & Hove Albion Women Football Club fan. But how did I get here? Have I only heard of Alessia Russo? Am I a real person or just an AI with a realistic beard and moustache? All will be revealed…

My first, and let’s face it main, reason for being a Brighton supporter is that I was born in Brighton. However, without stating my exact age, I can tell you that the team wasn’t pulling up any trees for the first two decades of my life. So I balanced my fandom of my local team with an interest in Manchester United – for some reason even before the Premier League began. What can I say, I was early to the bandwagon I guess.

As I grew older and more mature (well older anyway), I began to realise that if I wanted to actually attend football matches with regularity, well I was just going to have to suck it up and watch Brighton. Fortunately a good friend of mine had a hookup – his Dad was (and still is) a bigwig in the stadium crew for the St John’s Ambulance so they went to every single home game – and had space in the car for one more. For two seasons, whilst I remained a junior and could afford a season ticket, I watched every game at the Withdean from the scaffold seating affectionately known as the ‘wet side’. I also had the privilege of travelling to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the Second Division (as was) playoff final and sat behind the goal as Leon Knight blasted home the winner from the penalty spot.

Ever since then I’ve been hooked. Purely for cost reasons I don’t get to the Amex as often as I would like, but I still live within 20 minutes of Brighton and follow the team passionately.

Now when it comes to women’s football, indeed just regular football played by women, the story begins a little later. I remember becoming aware that England Women would be playing New Zealand in a warm-up game at the Amex prior to the World Cup in 2019. I have two daughters who at the time were aged 6 & 4 – what better way to introduce them to football than at a local stadium with a small but partisan crowd? Well – it sort of worked. They both enjoyed it, mainly for the spectacle as opposed to the actual game, and perhaps a seed had been sown, but put it this way – they didn’t ask when they could go again.

Fast forward to 2021. I knew the Euros were coming to Brighton the following year (assuming we all survived ‘Germageddon’) and England would have a game at the Amex. I’ve never been to a major football tournament before so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so and I managed to nab four tickets to the England vs Norway match.

Once again the wife and I took the kids – it’d be an experience if nothing else. Well, my goodness was it! 8-0! We barely sat down the whole game. As soon as we knew England would play at the Amex again in the quarter-finals against Spain, my eldest daughter, now 9 years old, BEGGED me to get tickets, and fortunately we managed to get some behind the goal. The very same goal Georgia Stanway smashed a shot into to win the game.

The tournament was a catalyst in increasing my interest in the women’s game and perhaps more importantly increasing my eldest daughter’s interest in football as a whole. From then onwards she’s been obsessed, wanting to consume every piece of news and information about football. She’ll tell me scores, who assisted goals, transfer updates, and a lot, lot more. I love it, although sometimes I do have tell her that I’m not that desperate to watch Nottingham Forest vs Burnley.

I knew full well that we couldn’t afford to go and see the men’s team on a regular basis, maybe once or twice a season at best, but with the Euros and our interest piqued, I began to look at season tickets for Brighton Women. The rest as they say is history. I think the four of us made at least 9 of the 11 home games last season despite inclement weather and frequent fixture amendments. My older daughter and I watch the games diligently, my wife even has a passing interest at this point, and my younger daughter couldn’t care less about the football, but she enjoys the family outing every few weeks.

So that’s a summary of the how. The why is fairly simple – there just isn’t enough original content being written about the women’s game at the moment. There are very few journalists who cover it in a specific role and even they often have other responsibilities within the men’s game. Whilst newspapers, magazines and media outlets have massively increased their women’s output when you’re starting at almost nothing, an article or two a week seems like a big jump. I believe the game will keep growing, will keep developing and will retain the broader interests of football fans. So why not write about something I love? Why not talk about these incredible women, incredible people, who leave it all out there on the pitch?

Where is both a simpler and more convoluted question. The first answer is basically – here. This is where at least for the foreseeable future you will see brand new content, be it articles, news, opinions and whatever else I can think of. I’d love to eventually move to a dedicated hosted website with forums, develop a podcast, do YouTube videos, conduct interviews etc, but for now – like a Michael Jackson movie – this is it.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when because certainly with news is can happen at any time. I likely won’t be the first to break anything anyway so news posts will probably be a bit more in depth than the usual clickbait Facebook linked articles. What I can offer is analysis and opinion, not so much direct knowledge of anything occurring first hand, but hey who knows, one day maybe! I would like to create original content for every WSL game though so that should come with regularity. If I have time then maybe FA and Conti Cup games as well.

On a slightly different tact, it has always been my intention to write for a living and in pursuit of that I was recently awarded a First-class Honours Degree in Arts & Humanities with an English Literature & Creative Writing specialty (woohoo go me!). I add this information for two reasons, I think it shows that I can write in a clear and understandable manner, and it speaks to why this is a blog as opposed to any other creative medium.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk and I look forward to interacting with many of you soon!

Duncan

August 2023