6 August 2026
- Training match slideshow
- New recruits?
- Sara Merican
Training match slide-show
Last Sunday, some signed up senior players, a few trialists and players from the Orient girl's youth setup, got together at Great Baddow for a training session and try-out match. Our thanks and appreciation to Roy Warner and the club for making these images available. Some of the ladies we know, we also know some of the others who are yet to be confirmed as signed up, there are a few others we don't know. For this reason, we won't attempt to tag names to the photos until everything is sorted out and the squad members are confirmed. Having said that, the opening picture is of our skipper Stef Paci.
New recruits
The women's FA, at our level, is an amalgam of numerous regional organisations who run and administer the amateur leagues. Until this season, Orient played in the various divisions within the regional organisation called "Greater London WFL". Now we've moved into a different organisation, so from now we're in the "Eastern Regional WFL". One thing all these organisations have in common is the over-arching leadership provided by the Football Association. Part of that overview can be seen by the group of websites called "fulltime.thefa.com". All the team, fixtures, results, tables and statistics can be found there. They also provide publicly available details of which players are registered with which clubs, in our case, you can see them HERE.
At the time of writing, we have 14 registered players, they are:
Lily Aungier - Tiffany Balfour - Bethany Brogan - Abby Caldon - Erin Cheyne - Freya Faulkner - Gracie Hickman - Libby Keeler - Brittany Varon - Sara Merican - Stefania Paci - Kaylee Shurety - Elissa Stonebrook and Amy Yeldham.
You'll notice that not all of these ladies have yet been introduced, that will doubtless follow soon.
Sara Merican
What we can do is tell you about Sara Merican, Sara took part in Last Sundays training event at Great Baddow. Sara adds to a number of international players who've appeared for the O's in recent years, in her case, she is an international for her home country of Singapore.
Sara is a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who describe her thus...
Sara Merican is a journalist, athlete and storyteller from Singapore whose career spans business journalism, entertainment, communications and sport. A Gates Cambridge Scholar, she holds an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge (2024).
Sara has represented Singapore internationally in both cricket and football. She has earned over 20 T20 caps in international cricket, competed at the 2023 Southeast Asian Games, and previously played in the Asian Cup Qualifiers for Singapore’s national football team. During the 2024/2025 season, she was part of Wigan Athletic’s first-ever women’s team, which went on to become league champions and secure promotion.
Beyond sport, Sara is an international voter for the Golden Globes and has reported on the global film and television industry for outlets including Deadline, Forbes, The Telegraph, the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound, and NME.
As an IOC Young Leader for 2025-2028, Sara seeks to bring visibility to women’s sports across Southeast Asia – amplifying voices, stories and opportunities that often go unseen.
Welcome Sara, we all hope you have a great time here at Leyton Orient