Newcastle United are heading in the right direction to set a brand new attendance document for a Girls’s FA Cup fixture previous to the competitors’s ultimate after they host fellow fourth tier facet Barnsley on Sunday.
The pair meet at St James’ Park within the FA Cup second spherical – the second time that Newcastle’s girls’s crew have performed on the membership’s predominant stadium this calendar yr.
The Woman Magpies hosted Alnwick City at St James’ Park in Could, operating out 4-0 winners in entrance of 22,134 supporters. This was the best home girls’s soccer attendance in England through the 2021/22 season – bettering any WSL determine, regardless of Newcastle’s tier 4 standing.
The membership have introduced that over 25,000 tickets have already been bought for Sunday’s fixture, which might be a document for any Girls’s FA Cup fixture exterior of the ultimate.
“I am unable to wait. Initially final yr we thought possibly that is the primary expertise we’ll have and also you by no means know if that may occur once more,” Newcastle boss Becky Langley informed membership media.
“The delight I really feel going on the market and being the supervisor for the ladies’s crew for the second time once more is simply one thing we’re extremely excited [about] and I am extremely happy with.”
Newcastle solely formally took possession of their girls’s crew in August 2022; they’d beforehand operated independently with the help of the Newcastle United Basis.
Following the takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund in October 2021, Newcastle director Amanda Staveley has spoken often of the membership’s ambitions for the ladies’s crew, stating in February of this yr that the long-term plan was for the crew to show skilled.
“Final yr we had been virtually working very sort of grassroots model,” Langley added. “When the homeowners got here on board they began to professionalise a few issues. However it was doing it with a staged strategy so it felt mild. Now we have gone into this season with a way more skilled really feel about every thing.”
Newcastle presently ply their commerce within the Nationwide League Division One North – three leagues beneath the WSL – and sit second within the desk. Sunday’s opponents Barnsley are presently fourth. The Woman Magpies ran out 1-0 winners when the pair met within the league in October.
