As we did last year, we get a home tie to kick things off as we welcome London Bees to The Meadow on August 17th. London Bees finished 4th last season off the back of their relegation from The Southern Premier Division in 2023/24 and I’m sure will be pushing hard to improve on last season’s league position. Let’s see if we can get our campaign off to a positive start in front of a good home crowd.
The week after we’re then in action in the FA Women’s National League Cup. This competition has a new format this year with the introduction of a group stage and entry of Professional Game Academy sides (you’ll remember we beat Tottenham Hotspur U21 in the plate competition last season). We’ll be drawn in one of 22 groups of four teams with the 22 group winners and 10 best runners-up advancing to the Cup knockout stages. You’ll see the 3 group games spread through August and September with our opponents yet to be announced.
Our second league game sees us travel to Dulwich Hamlet on August 24th (they finished 8th last season). Having won the fixture 1-0 at home last season the vocal Dulwich Hamlet fans will be wanting revenge! We then welcome AFC Sudbury to The Meadow on Sunday 31st August. Sudbury finished last season in 7th so again this feels like a winnable fixture.
Into September then and we travel to QPR who have strengthened over the summer and then host Cambridge United at home – both games that we hope to take something from at this early stage of the season.
You can see how the year develops from there! As I’ve mentioned previously this might be the toughest season yet in the FAWNL for Chesham. One or two teams have now gone full-time (most notably Norwich City who will be pushing hard this season having come close for the last two seasons) and a few other teams have installed full-time managers to lead their campaigns this year. We’ve also welcomed Luton Town, Fulham and MK Dons to our league! The tide continues to rise really positively on the women’s game – it just means we have to work harder and harder to continue to compete. Your support on match days is a really important part of that so do consider coming along to a game, buying a season ticket and adding CUFC Women to your weekend plans!
Next up we travel to Newport Pagnell this Sunday for pre-season match 2! I’ll update on that next week. Thanks for your support
Andy Westlake
Chair – CUFC Women
