With Fulham and Luton Town being promoted to our division and MK Dons coming down from tier 3, there are more “big” clubs in our division than ever and so we’re going to have to work harder than ever with the limited resources we have available to us. We’ve had 3 games so far and despite lots of good football we’ve been on the end of 3 defeats.

We kicked off our campaign at home to London Bees, the team sitting at the top of the table at this very early stage. We fell to a 0-4 defeat but in truth the game felt like we didn’t deserve such a big margin on the day. Without question Bees will be in contention come spring 2026.

We then faced a much strengthened QPR FC Women in the group stage of the FA WNL Cup. We’re up against QPR, Watford and Charlton Athletic Academy. It’s a super tough group so we’re using it as an opportunity for our U23 players to get some valuable experience against some quality opponents. QPR have secured strong financial support from the men’s club and the difference showed season on season! We fell to a big defeat on the day but have another go at them in a few weeks at their place in the league!

Finally we travelled to Dulwich Hamlet on Sunday. We secured 1 point from our games against Dulwich last season and felt like this could be a game we could get something from. In front of 351 home fans there was some great football played by Chesham but again we fell to a 2-0 defeat.

So…the early prognosis is pretty much as we thought. There are going to be no easy games and we’re going to consistently come up against teams that have more of everything than we do. However we’re going to give every game 100% and we have an incredible group of players who are up for the battle. This season will inevitably be about winning the mini-league amongst the 6 teams in the bottom half of the table.

Perhaps those teams will be AFC Sudbury, MK Dons, Actonians, Dulwich Hamlet, Luton Town and Chesham (it’s certainly too early to tell!). With that in mind we go in to Sunday’s tie against AFC Sudbury knowing that it’s an important fixture for us to get something from – I know they’ll be saying the same thing! After that we’re back in FA WNL Cup action the following weekend against Watford.

Do come along on Sunday – it’s a BIG game and we’d love a good crowd to build on the 150 that were in for our mid-week game against QPR.

Andy Westlake