Hook Or By Crook: Crystal Palace Ladies Players Told They Need To Raise £250 Each To Continue Playing For Club On Eve Of New Season

Chris Wright

4th, September 2018

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Crystal Palace Ladies’ players have been told that they will have to cough up £250 apiece if the club is to keep going.

With the new newly-formed FA Women’s Championship set to kick-off this weekend, Palace Ladies were reportedly informed recently that they will have to either raise the money in sponsorship or pay out of their own pockets.

Palace say the money is an “annual subscription fee” that must be paid by senior players to keep the team afloat, but nevertheless many squad members are worried about not being able to raise the specified amount in such a short space of time.

An anonymous source close to the club told the Guardian:

Some of the players, particularly the younger ones, are really stressed about having to find the money.

Just to really rub it in, the demand was also made in the very same week Palace awarded a new £130,000-a-week contract to Wilfried Zaha.

The Guardian also claim to have seen the correspondence sent between the club and their players, with the same source describing the letter signed by chairman Richard Spokes – designed to be handed on to potential sponsors, asking for their backing – as “very patronising”.

They also add that it is believed Palace have put a “£50 a month payment plan” in place for players who cannot afford to pay for themselves in one lump sum.

Call us naive, but it might be nice for the mens’ team to club together and pay these subscription fees on the Ladies’ behalf, given that they all make £250 in a matter of hours.

Then, the more over-reaching issues of disparity and inequality can perhaps start to be addressed a little more thoroughly.

Posted in Crystal Palace, Women's Football

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2 Comments

  1. Straight Dave says:

    “Call us naive, but it might be nice for the mens’ team to club together and pay these subscription fees on the Ladies’ behalf, given that they all make £250 in a matter of hours.”

    Hahahahahaha, “make”. No, they ‘get’ that. They certainly don’t make it. Pisses me off no end when people use terms like “earn” and ‘”make” to describe footballers and the frankly obscene wages they take home on a weekly basis

  2. Anonymous says:

    And why should the men be expected to put their hand in their pockets just because they earn big wages? I thought girls run the world according to Queen Beyonce and they were all “independent women who don’t need no man” so why shouldn’t they be expected to pay it themselves? We don’t ask nor expect footballers to put their hand in their pocket to pay the student debts of struggling junior doctors just because they make a fortune, or to supplement the salaries of minimum wage tea ladies just because they make a fortune etc, so why should they be expected to pay for the womens game just because they make more?! (or are we going to pretend that womens football is “just the same” and on a par with the mens Prem?!).

    If it were the other way around, and some female athletes were the star attraction and were making millions but the men had to pay a few quid to have a go as well would anyone be demanding the women pony up for their counterparts? No. Not a chance. They’d say they fought hard to earn every penny and it’s not their job to fund the mens game. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a “strong, independent body” but also expect the men to give you hand outs just because one sport is infinitely more lucrative and has infinitely more appeal than the other, no matter how much people want to pretend they are the same.

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