Fans of Leyton Orient Women

24 June 2026

Recruitment is already underway


It's too early to start banding names about. As we know from the men's first team, all manner of rumours abound as to who we're looking at, whether or not said player would come to Orient anyway.. - so we're not going to get into that.

Looking at the facts, we know that the McCaffrey Football Investment Group (MFIG) have taken a major interest in Tier 4 side Actonians. This means last season's coaching crew will not now be leading team affairs at Orient although Jason Stephens remains as the CEO of MFIG who will continue their invaluable support of our beloved women's team.

We know about and welcome new women's manager Jody Buckley who joins us after a spectacularly successful spell at Essex club Maldon and Tiptree. He brings with him an impressive duo of experienced coaches in Marc Wilson and Stuart Hudson.

Even in our "meeja" activities, we've been impressed with the folks at M&T, perhaps we can learn from them, maybe even invite them in.

Gathering ingredients for the new Orient line-up
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We don't know how many, if any, of last season's Orient stars will look to stay with the club, there are also strong possibilities that some may want to follow Jody from Maldon. Then there are triallists who will be assessed starting on June 30th - and with all that said, not everyone seen at the training ground will decide to join Orient and, as always in football, some may not be invited to join. Finally, there are a number of youth players who will be looking to step up to first team duty.

All in all, there's a lot of work to be done. We know our new coaching crew have already assessed players in advance of the trials and we are aware there are a lot of interested women who fancy a shot at Tier 6 with Leyton Orient.
One thing is for certain, there's some hot-shot players looking at Orient, we don't know how many will want to make the leap but we who look in from the outside, are forming the opinion that we have something exciting to look foward to. More details when we get them....

Women's football, National set up.

There have been a few changes made to the National hierarchy of women's football, we've also taken to opportunity to sharpen up our understanding of how it all goes together. Below is a chart showing the four basic categories, from the Women's Super League (full time professionals) at tiers 1 and 2 - Women's National Leagues (semi-professional mostly) at tiers 3 and 4 - Women's Regional leagues (unpaid) at tier 5 and 6 (that's us now) - the County Leagues at grass roots level.

Tier

League

Status

All-England national competition

1

FA Women's Super League 1

Full-time
Professional

2

FA Women's Super League 2

Full-time
Professional

FA Women's National leagues (FAWNL)

3

2 zonal leagues (North & South)

Largest zones
Mix of amateur and semi pro.

4

4 zonal leagues

Large zones
Mix of amateur and semi pro.

FA Women's Regional leagues

5

8 regional leagues

Mid-sized regions
Strictly amateur

6

17 regional leagues
(This is us for 2026/7)

Smaller regions
Strictly amateur

FA County level leagues

7

County leagues

County/district
Top level (Grass roots)

8

County leagues

County/district
Level 2 (Grass roots)

9

County leagues

County/district
Level 3 (Grass roots)



This chart and a number of other related information pages are always available via our Main Menu ☰ link at the top of every page.

News snippets


Some bits and pieces we've picked here in LOFCwomen.com towers. In no particular order....