lofcwomen.com

23 Sep 2024

Yes! Eleven goals!!! For the first competitive match of the new season, the senior women faced a fellow Tier-7 side (from a different regional league) in the form of Oaklands Wolves from St. Albans. No mugs there... they train in tandem with Arsenal's development people and, at our match, showed themselves to be an able and fit side. The result is a measure of the sheer all-round strength of the Orient women's team.
A series of events over recent years means we are playing at Tier Seven, that's no park kick-about footy, these are serious players who train their bodies and skills to be the best around. This year has seen a major upgrade in everything the club is doing relative to the women's teams. Nigel Travis and Co have always supported the female half of the club despite the finances being prohibitive to go too far. We have now entered what we are going to call "The McCaffrey era" - Things changed immediately.
Jim McCaffrey, prime mover of major sponsor 'Eastdil Secured' and his family have invested personally in the women's team, immediately we see a club photographer Simon O'Connor attend the match with stills and video gear, then a full match report and gallery within 24 hours on the club website, this is new. The game was played on Myrak's best pitch, there's an attempt to play selected games at the stadium (fiendishly expensive if tickets are not sold) and no doubt plenty of other stuff we can't see. A late addition, a fully edited video highlights of the game now appears on the club's website.

We're not going to write a standard match report here, there's already an adequate example on the club's website, you can see it HERE along with a smart Photo Gallery. If you prefer, Paul and Steve at the Orient-Outlook-Podcast gave an audio update of the women's weekend in their latest broadcast. Here's a link to their Womens Update spot. If you want to see every move, blow by blow, our live text update page remains available to see how the game unfolded. See it HERE
We are going to acknowledge the arrival of Stephanie McCaffrey. Stephanie treated everyone to an object lesson in what an international footballer can do. Clearly head and shoulders beyond everyone else (sorry if this embarrasses you Stephanie) but five goals and four assists - in a single game!!! Dear fan, if you'd been there, you'd now have something to tell your grandkids, it was that good.
As masterful and influential as Stephanie was, we also saw some emerging talent in the side. The back line quietly got on with their job of defending against some quality players from Oaklands, here's a special mention for Riley Whale who showed us the power she has and the tenacity to go with it. Very much the kind of player you'd love to have on your side and hate to face. Riley got a nasty knock so here's wishing her a speedy recovery. This was our first view of Tayla Gencarelli who played the 2nd half. It seems nothing got past her - or even got close to it . A very impressive performance which coincided with the end of Oakland's goal threat.
Strikers Leanne Bates and Grace Collins-Edwards clearly enjoyed the passes coming mainly from Stephanie and looked like they really fancied their chances of getting goals. A special word too for Sion Kamiende who got 20 minutes game time, her vision and speed to latch on to a McCaffrey through-ball left the Oaklands defence in her dust as she smartly snapped up her goal.
A great all-round game, can't wait for next Sunday's opener (for us) in the Greater London Premier division against unbeaten Camden Town. They are always tough, they will have seen this O's result and must be wondering...... !

We get very little news from the under 16s or under 18s girls teams but we couldn't let Saturday's result go un-remarked. Our under 16s travelled to West Ham in a Junior Premier League (JPL) league game and came away with a famous 2:1 victory over the Hammers. Just sayin' .

Similar to the men's FA Cup rounds, the early games are called "preliminary rounds", there are three of them and are open to teams playing at Tiers 6 and 7. We can't find exactly when things occur but teams who win the three preliminary rounds then move forward into the WFA Cup "proper". As the rounds get played, higher and higher leagues come into the competition until the 4th "proper" round where the stars of the Women's Super League (WSL) join in. We're about four games short of that at the moment but each round pays significant prize money (£000's) so the heat and pressure increases as you progress.

Here are the results involving teams from the Greater London Premier League (shown with 🏐 in cup matches):

Our opponents next week, Camden Town, remain unbeaten in the league but did go down 3-2 in the FA Cup to fellow Premier league side South London Firsts. The other 100% teams are Islington Borough - Top with 3 wins from 3, and Hammersmith with 2 wins from 2. Camden-and-Islington (Candi), Headstone Manor and Brentford B remain without points. You can see the current table at lofcwomen.com standings.

A big thank you to our growing group of contributors, we love hearing from you and welcome your stories, photos and perspectives! If you have any positive experiences or insights related to the women's teams, no matter how small, we'd be very happy to hear from you. You can reach out via email, 'X', Instagram, or WhatsApp at +0385913080531. All the links are available on our home page.
We look forward to your contributions.