2025 was a year of change for women’s football at Bingham Town FC.  The senior players continued as always to give their best when pulling on the shirt, but there were very few of them still playing who had links to the youth teams at the club, or even the NG13 area.  Players who had previously been happy were drifting away and youngsters coming to the end of their time in junior girls’ football were not staying with us.  We needed a shift in our approach.

Our work on the female football pathway at BTFC began a few years earlier with the introduction of our FA Wildcats program, which allowed young girls to come along and give football a try.  This became a very successful way of getting girls and parents involved with the club and creating new teams from U7 upwards.  As these players continued to move up through the youth age groups, the next thing for us to tackle was the transition from junior girls to senior women’s football.  How could we keep players with us into adulthood?

By the end of the 2024/25 season it was apparent that our U16s team would not have enough players to continue as U18s, and that trying to recruit more players for that next age group was likely to be extremely difficult if not impossible.   However, we felt there were ex-BTFC players out there who would come back to the club if an alternative to the existing senior set-up was provided.  So we decided to hang on to our remaining few U16s and include them in a new open age team; the BTFC Women Reds.  Training started almost immediately with Tim staying on from the U16s as manager, plus Russ, Ricky and Andy joining as coaches.  All four of them brought many years involvement with the female section of the club and a real commitment to girls and women’s football.

Former girls team managers and players were contacted.  As word began to spread, numbers at training began to grow quickly.  The locally based players from the existing women’s team decided to join the new setup, meaning a parting of the ways for the club and the previous coaches.  We were now the only senior team and by the summer the squad size was looking big enough to enter the league.  Since we had several relatively young players stepping into senior football and quite a few coming back to football after a break, we joined Senior Division 3 of the Notts Girls and Ladies League.

The league fixtures would ultimately be split across two phases.  Phase One would see us play the other 12 teams in Div 3 and the team went undefeated with 10 wins and 2 draws, finishing 6 points clear of second place.  Our only defeat in this period was in the County Cup.  Phase Two would be us against the other 5 teams who had finished in the top half of the division in Phase One.  We chose to use these as development games and try a few things out, whilst also preparing for the latter stages of the League Cup.  Some teams had decided they needed to ‘park the bus’ when playing Bingham again, but that presented a good challenge and these were valuable matches for us to learn more about the players.   We did not dominate Phase Two as we had in Phase One and finished 3^rd, but having secured the title and promotion already, our focus was on the Cup. 

In the aforementioned League Cup, we qualified from the mini group stage and then had a comfortable 6-0 home win in the quarter final, followed by quite a tense 3-2 away win in the semi-final.  This set up a final up in Mansfield with Meden Vale, who finished behind us in Phase One and just pipped us to the post in Phase Two.  The final saw a real contrast in styles and attitudes.  Bingham created the best chances early on and took the lead with a fantastic strike into the top corner from the edge of the box.  Had we made more of other opportunities in the first period things could have been comfortable but where’s the fun in that, eh?!  Meden’s more direct style looked like it might bear fruit in the second half as they pressed hard for an equaliser backed by some vociferous local support, however the Bingham players refused to be intimidated, stood firm and saw it through for a thoroughly deserved victory.  League and Cup Double?  Completed it!                               

Our overall campaign saw us play 23, win 17, draw 4 and lose 2.  We scored 69 goals, conceded 15, and kept 14 clean sheets.

The League Cup was secured, and with only 1 league defeat all season a combined table for both Phases would have had us 3 points clear at the top.  The team has been rebuilt with a true core of BTFC women and had players from age 16 right up to 50.  We are all incredibly proud of how they have pulled together and played so well in their debut season, but this is just the beginning.  From now on we want all girls playing for Bingham’s junior teams to have a route into senior football with the club too, so watch this space.

To see regular updates on the Women’s team you can follow us on our Socials: Instagram  Facebook  X   

Thanks also to our team sponsors for all their support in 2025/26:

Bingham Arena  Specsavers Bingham  A.W.Lymn

Cup Final photographs courtesy of Matt Langman