Women's Raise Your Game conference 2017

It's that time of year again, the 'kick it out, raise your game' conference. Held at the most amazing and inspiring of location, which is the Ethiad Stadium, home of Manchester City. The conference is there to attract all type of females regardless of ethnicity, background, job role or qualifications to either get involved in job roles in football, be inspired or gain advice and guidance on how to excel in your chosen football career path, or there to see what opportunities and options are out there. Therefore, it's pretty much open to any female who has a interest and passion for football.

Throughout the day, you wont be bored. There is everything on offer to attend from Media and career workshops, to one to one sessions, followed by a general talk of leading women already in top roles within football. The workshops are a great way to extend your knowledge on how to get involved, what you need to do to be involved in football and then a summary of the stories from the speakers of there job role and how they got to where they are now. These are all about learning and listening to people who are already in the jobs they want to be in so a great way to inspire the next generation and brilliant way to gain extensive knowledge in how to thrive within the world of football. 

The one to one session are of course a lot more intimate then the workshops, as you get the chance to speak one on one to the leading professional in a variety of career paths. This is your opportunity to not ony ask every question under the roof, but being a opportunitiest and telling them how good you are as well, as there are constantly jobs arising and you never know they could be on the look out for someone! 

The days agenda provides so much relevant information and fantastic opportunities to lean you towards a career path or maybe even eliminate career path that maybe aren't as up your street as you initially thought, both technically as good as each other. 

Of course, the importance of it being at such an inspiring venue such as the Ethiad, only emphasises what is out there for you in your career and hearing the stories of great panel of leading professionals, that one day were all in your position, looking for there way into the industry. 

In summary, if you're a female looking to get into the football industry in any way, shape or form. This is like LinkedIn but in real life. Leading professionals that are prodominantly there to help you and offer you all the help they can, to hopefully allow you to get in and go far. Or even if you don't get the opportunity to have a one on one chat, like stated previously the workshops are filled with so much advice from a numerous amount of backgrounds, it's so easy to gain great advice and be inspired to fulfill your dreams.

Nottinghamshire Women's cup final 2017

The most exciting times lie ahead when it comes to the end of the football season, we know what it means dont we? The cup finals. The match where two teams will go head to head for 90, maybe 120 minutes to battle it out for the winners trophy.

This season Radcliffe Olympic Ladies, were lucky enough to be involved for the third year running in the Nottinghamshire women's cup final, against Nottingham Forest Ladies. This game has so much history behind it, which of course only increases the emotion even more, ultimately making it more than just who wears the winner's medals at the end of the game.

The match was played Thursday 27th May, held at Basford UTD's ground. The weather was definitely on our side, maybe a little too much, this obviously then encouraged many local football fans to come down and support both teams and be entertained by a real local derby. Around 300 people attended, so you can imagine the atmosphere of the crowd in ratio with a small ground was pretty amazing, and a pleasure to be involved in.

The game itself, I must admit it was a tough one to play in due to the weather. For the first couple of minutes Forest dominated and tried to show us who was the dominant of this game, however, we, as we always do, took over control after around 20 minutes. Radcliffe were confident on the ball and always looked like we could score when in possession of the ball. However, in the first half we did lack quality on the finishing side, we could definitely of been 3/4 nill up by the time the half time whistle went. But luck wasn't on ourside and it remained 0-0 as we went in for a well deserved break and refreshments.

This is it now, 45 minutes to showcase all that we had worked for within the 2016/17 season, which like most teams, had been full of ups and downs. We came out, straight away taking possession and dominating the game, Forest quite evidently weren't able to play there usual game of football and began to get quite impatient, which of course played in our favour as this meant they were consistently hoofing the ball forward and not really creating any chances for themselves. We were creating chances after chances and both teams new there were only a few minutes left, and there were evidently going to be no goals in the 90 minutes, therefore both teams were preparing for a tiring extra half an hour worth of football!

And then, the cruelty of a game of football struck. We dominanted the game from start to finish, creating numerous amounts of chances, the team in control, always. 90+3 minutes


, Nottingham Forest get a corner. Drilled in to the penalty area, and of course, you know what's coming, a forest player gets her head on the end of it, hits the bottom left side of the back of the net. Heartbreaking. Our heads went down for a split second as any teams would, then we rushed the ball back to the centre spot and tried so hard to get that last second equalisers. The dreaded final whistle was blown, and that was it, it wasn't meant to be. Football can be a very cruel game.

Even though the game didnt end up in our favour, after a few days of being able understand we did all we could and it just wasn't our day. The day was a pleasure to be involved in and it was a fantastic opportunity for Radcliffe Olympic to showcase what our team is about, even though we were the underdogs, every single person who attended that game, and I would say even the Nottingham Forest players would say we deserved to win that day.

That's the way football goes sometimes, we have to dust ourselves off and prepare for the coming season and hopefully be back again next year to claim the title back.

Watch the highlights of the game here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=rDxYfKlfjQI