Fans of Leyton Orient Women

16 April 2026

Bumper Thursday Update:

• Gizmo's Academicals preview
• Ben's photo-Video show
• GLWFL Premier League preview
• Wayne Rothon says...

INTRO: Today's "bumper" update is one of the best posts we at LOFCwomen.com have made, this reflects two things:-
(1) The best season ever plus the all-round good feelings coming from everyone involved in the women's group, and..
(2) The fact that we have top people with us now; a growing band of selfless and dedicated helpers and contributors who make it possible to get closer to the support function we aim to be.
A special shout-out to Larry Peterson, 'Gizmo' G and Ben James, you guys make all the difference!
Now to today's edition....

Gizmo's match Preview
GLWFL Premier Division
Academicals vs Orient

After a resounding semi-final win in the League Cup, this Sunday sees a short trip to Walthamstow to take on London Academicals in the league. At the same time, Tooting Bec are playing South London First knowing that if they lose that game, it’s curtains for their slim chances of winning the division.

The Accies have done fine for a promoted team and will be staying in the division as they sit seventh and cannot be caught by Islington Borough. Their tactical issue is that they have a very leaky defence which Orient took full advantage of last time. Naomi Medina is as close to ever present as it gets with the team. The goal scoring threat from the Accies is Keely Nazareth with twelve in thirteen. A good biblical reference but they will need a miracle to get something out of this game.

Orient come into this game after a comfortable 12-0 win last Sunday over Islington Borough. Grace Gillard was moved into an attacking midfield role and provided four goals while Georgia Griffin netted five. Another good game for GG squared. The game saw an impressive debut from Bria Abbiati and the welcome return of Ellie Leek. I imagine that it will be more or less the same team, with possibly a return for Steph McCaffrey and Lucy Porter, depending on their non-football commitments.

📷 Ben James

Hayley West may be lobbying for a new role further up the pitch! Poppy Binding appears to have moved from scoring to creating. This game is a foregone conclusion but, with a cup final schedule for next week, all the players will be keen to put in a good performance to gain a starting berth. This could be bad news for the Accies.

Previous results

Leyton Orient 16 London Academicals 0 (16 December 2025) Venue

Th game will be played at the Douglas Eyre Sports Centre, Coppermill Lane E17 7HE. It’s operated by the London Playing Fields Foundation, established in 1890 and this site has been part of their portfolio since 1909. Find out more at: www.lpff.org.uk and consider donating.
There is car parking on-site. The closest overground station is St James Street on the Weaver line. Walthamstow Central is a twenty-minute walk from the ground. Closest pub appears to be the Coppermill just over the road. Facilities (food and drink) are scant at this location. There are loads of alternatives slightly further afield. If you like street art, there are murals at the beginning and end of Elmfield Road.

Gizmo G ✍

All the fixtures now listed

The GLWFL have now scheduled all the remaining cup and league fixtures. You can view them at our Results and Fixtures page or here's a view of the games remaining...

These fixtures and those of our main rivals, Tooting Bec, throw up one or two fascinating scenarios!...

Scenario 1
If we beat London Academicals and Tooting Bec lose to South London on Sunday, we will win the title and go into the following week's Capital Cup final against Hammersmith as Premier league champions.

Scenario 2
If we beat London Academicals and Tooting Bec beat South London on Sunday, the next league match may decide the title when the Os travel to... you've guessed it!... Tooting Bec. What a match that would be. It's on the 3rd of May and everyone will there (me too, flights are booked already... Ed).

Even if Tooting Bec beat South London and then us too, we will still have two Premier games to gather the three points needed to be crowned champions. However, Jason and the girls will not want this, they are aiming for 18 wins from 18 games. What a season!

Ben's Photo-Video contribution.

With our LOFCwomen.com team going to all the matches now, we have the capacity to take a few photos and record some video as well as report and send every piece of on-field action to our popular live-text service (Example here), a dual service we've long since aimed to provide.

Here's a 4-minute YouTube clip with photos and videos taken at Sundays home cup-tie win against Islington Borough Ladies.

It seems the profile and general awareness of the women's team has never been higher, another significant part of achieving that is the work done by Caitlin Kelly who produces some excellent stuff on her Instagram pages. Click the image to watch Caitlin's video coverage of last Sunday's game. It's impressive.

GLWFL Premier Division round-up

Here are this Sunday's Greater London Premier Division fixtures.

AFC Croydon need only a point to take Sporting Duet's 4th place - and keep it. They will be confident of getting it. Islington Borough are already down.
South London vs Tooting Bec promises to be a real battle of the southerners, Bec need to win this one to stay in the hunt for the title although their current runners-up place is safe.
AFC Leyton return to Division One North after a single season in the Premier Division - barring a near impossible mathematical turnaround. They put up a good fight to stay there but it was a bridge a little too far. Luton have a chance of catching Croydon and taking their 4th spot away, they'll be gunning for that.

The GLWFL Premier division table looks like this.
The league season is 18 games long ....

Wayne Rothon says...

Following the women's CEO Jason Stephens' recent programme notes, Wayne Rothon, one of Jason's trusted deputies, spoke about the management team's maiden campaign in charge of the women's teams as they now close in on a possible season-ending treble! We've extracted most of it here...

The Orient women's team has a top trio managing it. We've heard from manager Jason Stephens in recent programmes and today we catch up with his coach and valued member of staff. Wayne Rothon. He explained that he has worked with both Jason and Craig Davidson for some years before taking the partnership to the Os for this season and the start of life in the Greater London Women's League.

"I've been with Jason since we were at AFC Basildon before Covid at Tiers 3 and 4, Craig came in a year later so we have all worked as a group for five or six years now. We work well together and have similar personalities and the same goals but also all have different traits; Jason is the manager and CEO and will set out training. Craig is his assistant manager and they will take half a session each while I'm there doing bits and bobs in between all that - GPS, data, kit and admin, a lot of backroom stuff, in the background plus some goalkeeper coaching."

Wayne went on to tell how he'd quit playing and then got Involved in coaching and management through youth football. Now he is hoping that Orient owners Jim and Steph McCaffrey can help guide the club up into the higher divisions. He added:

"I played some Sunday league and Saturday morning football but stopped at 31/32 years old after dislocating my knee and breaking my ankle. My daughter then began playing at 11/12 and later I started coaching as I took on a coach/manager role. Now I'm here at Orient, the owners want to do things right by the players because, for many years in the lower leagues in women's football, things have been so poorly represented financially, Steph and Jim are ambitious and have big ideas for us."

Wayne also tells us that sides are now out for damage limitation after enduring some painful defeats at the hands of Orient. However, now with key players succumbing to injuries that still has Stephens' outfit on course for a league and cup treble, one new player has joined the ranks for the run-in.

"We managed to sign a friend of Steph's, Bria Abbiati, who is studying at Cambridge University, by the end of last month's deadline. Then we played Brentford B in the JGMT Cup. They were young with plenty of energy. Teams have played us or heard about us by now and they face us defensively-minded. It's difficult to break down teams when they have ten players behind the ball. It was probably 85 per cent possession in our favour against Brentford but, at the beginning of the season, we were beating teams with double figures and they don't want that to happen again. There's also a little bit of fatigue in there for us, we haven't had the numbers on the bench to be able to rotate players or give them a rest so it has become a bit tougher".