Women’s Super League clubs ‘strongly supported’ terminating 2019/20 campaign, pre-season could begin next month – Kelly Simmons

The FA’s Women’s Professional Game Director, Kelly Simmons, has revealed the majority of Women’s Super League clubs wanted the campaign curtailed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision to abandon the season was confirmed on May 25, with Chelsea since awarded the title on a weighted points-by-game basis while Liverpool have been relegated to the second tier.

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Kelly Simmons oversees the Women’s Super League, FA Women’s Championship and the FA Women’s National League in her role with the FA

Simmons joined Women’s Football Weekly to discuss the reasons behind abandoning the season.

“We had to wait for the government protocols to come out in terms of how elite sport comes back,” she told talkSPORT. “So once we’d got that we spoke to the clubs about the operational and logistical challenges with those and the costs.

‘We also spoke to the players and it’s fair to say a number of them were apprehensive about coming back to football whilst the country was in lockdown.

“So once we looked at all of that collectively, there was very strong support from the clubs to terminate the league.

“From then we obviously came to look at sporting outcome. But the big decision was around termination and that was really dictated by government information.”

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Meanwhile, Simmons revealed that pre-season preparations could get underway for the 2020/21 campaign as early as next month.

“By July shops should be open and pubs will be starting to do likewise,” she added. “People will be also be starting to go back to work and we’ll gradually come out of this lockdown.

“Hopefully some of those key factors that the government judge their strategy on such as the number of deaths and the R rate will be coming down in the right way and people will feel more confident coming back into society.

“We’ve obviously got to work alongside those clubs to put those protocols in place and if there are some cost challenges we are talking to the football stakeholders and government about making sure we are ready [to return].”

Listen to Women’s Football Weekly with Faye Carruthers every Monday, 6-7pm on talkSPORT 2. The show is also available as a podcast, on Spotify and Apple products

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