Last week, myself, Duncan Muller and the backroom staff were informed by the board of Tooting & Mitcham United FC that the WOMENS team project had been abandoned.

This decision came from Jackie Watkins (CEO) and Steve Adkins (Owner) due to them not wanting to provide the women’s team with equal facilities.

Myself and Duncan wouldn’t allow this to happen so tried to negotiate as we believe the mens and womens first teams deserve the same opportunities.

Unfortunately, these negotiations failed, and they decided to terminate our roles within the club.

From emails it recent weeks, it was very clear that Tooting had a ‘tickbox’ exercise in order to try and set up and women’s team and we were used us to do this.

We initially noticed red flags when Jackie Watkins sent an email 1-day before the open training session on the 20th May, stating she wanted us to cancel this (to which 80+ people had registered).

Since the open session, Jackie allowed us to continue with the project, allowing us to spend money (such as the FA cup registration fee, affiliation fee, cameras, training equipment, and league fee), with no communication from herself or Steve.

However, on Friday 31st May (Liam’s Birthday), she issued a termination letter.

We will be back and we’ll continue to fight for equal opportunities within sport.

Women’s teams aren’t tick box exercises, they’re a lifestyle.

Much love,

LC & DM.

——– END OF STATEMENT ——–

Founder of the project and CEO of Brisk Agency said the following: “When I joined the club as marketing officer in April, I noticed a number of changes had to be made. The way the club was ran was outdated.

Constant slagging matches between the first team/media team and the members club (Nick Shaw, Stephen Reynolds, Chris Wooley, etc) left the club very unpleasant.

There’s so many politics within football, and this is definitely one of them.

It’s clear that the board have chosen ‘the old dinosaurs’ over a fresh, young team who had big media plans for Tooting, including; full match highlights, and a documentary.

Our jobs were to change the face of Tooting for the better, and we were. But now they’re going backwards.

We will be back, and we will fight for equal opportunities within sports”.