Underdogs to Overachievers: The Woodmansterne Women’s CC Story

Father and daughter duo Mark and Amy Gordon had, for a long time, wanted to start a women’s cricket team, but had never quite found the right moment to go for it. Amy had always played club cricket alongside her County career, and valued it greatly. Then, before the start of the 2025 season, events conspired to leave Amy with a simple choice: give up on playing club cricket, or start a new team…

"I came home from the committee meeting and started crying."

Before coming to the decision to start Woodmansterne Women’s CC, Amy had played for another women’s side in the area. Amy told me that there was a clear disparity between her values and those of her former club, which came to a head at her last committee meeting. She described the sentiment of her last AGM there: "one of the reasons that I came home crying from that AGM is that they didn't actually care for the little guy who couldn't afford it... it's obviously an expensive sport, and they just didn't care. I was like, you're just pushing people away because they can't afford it." This attitude, coupled with the fact that she was unable to seriously voice the concerns of the women’s side, led to Amy leaving the club.

Without a clear option for another team to join, Amy and Mark started seriously working out how they could start their own team. "Probably two weeks later we were in the pub... being like, how do we actually do it? Get this started?"

"I'm not sure we needed to talk them round at all... It's quite a nice position to be in."

For a new team, finding a club willing to back them can often be a stumbling block; committees have their own priorities with their existing teams, and a new side means putting a strain on the club’s resources, space, and time.

Having lived in the area for a while, the pair had got to know some of the members of Woodmansterne Cricket Club over the years, and knew that this club would need little persuading: "They’d always say, ‘When are you going to come play here?’ ‘When are you going to be able to set up this team?’" 

That time came in 2025 and the club welcomed their plans: "it wasn't actually that hard... they had no negatives really as a committee."

Mark explained to me that the men’s Sunday cricket was "non-existent, basically," so the club appreciated the idea of a women’s Sunday side "bringing in five home games, minimum." And, with this promise of more games, the club agreed to open the facilities on Sundays to accommodate their new team.

"The facilities over there are fine for a ladies team anyway."

Facilities are a common concern when growing a club to include women’s teams. The changing rooms, of course, needed updating to include a women-only space, but this was a simple fix to the existing facilities, rather than needing any outlay from the club: “There's six changing rooms … we just said one of them would have to be women's only the whole season and the committee was like, ‘yep no worries. Changing room one is now for the women’s team only.’" With the addition of a make-shift sign on the door of the changing room, the women’s team then had their own space within the clubhouse.

Mark told me that the volunteers at the club had also been more than willing to accommodate the new side’s fixtures: "The groundsmen have been great… they'll mark out a new boundary and pitch every Saturday night, and Dave will come up and do that.”

"I've never heard anyone at Woodmansterne saying anything about the ladies team negatively, at all."

"We don't pay players at all. Never have, never will."

With the club’s committee and facilities ready and willing for a women’s team to start, the next challenge was to actually find the players. Amy’s social media presence and her name being associated with the new team definitely helped with recruitment: "I brought three players over [from my previous club] and then it was just a bit of social media. A few popped up from there and then some people sort of just appeared because people had obviously said that I'm now playing at Woods."

Amy did admit that, although her presence helped with the recruitment of players, it has been a bit of a double-edged sword for the team as a whole: "it helped, but also shot us in the foot a little bit, because it's currently still viewed as ‘Amy Gordon's team’. Some people would have judged it and thought ‘you’re just going because she’s there’ … but we got 20 players in the first year, I think."

It’s not easy to recruit that many players for a new team, and what’s more impressive is that they have retained their squad throughout the first two years. "We only lost one person last year. And that was only [through] injury."

And all of this, without compromising the existing club policy, which was explained to Amy and Mark when they were recruiting their team: they’ve never paid players, and they never will.

Luckily, the club’s philosophy of ‘cricket for the fun of cricket’ married with theirs, as Mark explained: "I don't think as a ladies team we'd ever go down that [paying players] road. Because we've always said from the outset that we just want to have fun." Amy continued her dad’s sentiment: “We just want to have fun, and if we win games of cricket, even better. But we want everyone to enjoy the game, and feel a part of the squad and that’s the most important part for us as a club.”

"I think a lot of people want to be part of something brand new."

The price of kit was one of the key issues Amy had wanted to raise at her previous club, so it was naturally one of the first things she addressed when starting Woodmansterne Women’s. "Who's going to buy [all] that kit? People would be wearing mismatched kit, no one can afford it."

Expensive kit is a common barrier to joining a sports club, especially for a sport with so much specialist equipment, so they had to come up with a solution. "We asked people we knew … our main sponsor was someone I knew who ran a travel agency … and I just put [a call for sponsors] on my story … I’d got a bunch of new followers on my Instagram and someone I actually didn’t even know [got in touch] … we got like £800 from them."

Reflecting on the initial support they got from sponsors, Amy and Mark were convinced that the interest is there for new sides, "especially in women's sport."

Amy also noted they "lucked out that I have a lot of spare kit," and this, combined with their newly found sponsorships, allowed them to offer free kit to any new players who signed up and paid the standard registration fee of £60.

"A kit bundle was about £150 … plain trousers, top, training shirt, and a jumper … that was given completely free … Amy ended up buying the last four shirts because we got more people than we budgeted for!"

There are a number of barriers to people joining a new team, but with their focus on making the club as accessible as possible, Amy and Mark proved that there are ways to lower these barriers. It’s no surprise that their player retention has been so high when the players are made to feel so welcome when they join.

"You’re a new team, you should start at the bottom."

When it comes to joining a league for the first time, it can be difficult to know where a team should be positioned. There was a lot of discussion between Woodmansterne and the league organisers as to which league the team should be entered in, and whether they would be allowed to compete in the Elite T20 Cup, given it was their first season as a team. 

After Amy accrued the emailed support of 20+ players ready to play for Woodmansterne Women’s CC, the league agreed to put them in Division 1, and also granted them permission to enter the Elite T20 Cup, both tough competitions but ones that this new team wanted to show that they belonged in. Mark was confident that this was the level their team should be starting out at: “With the players we had, we knew we were good enough.”

"We did the club proud."

When Woodmansterne’s entry to the T20 Cup was confirmed, Amy messaged the person who helped with their application process: "I texted him, and I was like, watch, we'll win the whole thing. He said, ‘I’ll buy you a beer if you do.’"

They defied all expectations by making it to the semi-finals where, as chance would have it, they were up against Amy’s former club. To reach the semi-final of the cup was a fantastic achievement in and of itself, but they did not stop there. Woodmansterne won their semi-final and were then into the Elite T20 Cup final in their first season as a team.

They offered to host finals day and the club welcomed the idea but, before they could host a ‘finals day’ for both the Ladies Shield and Ladies T20 Cup Finals, they decided the clubhouse needed some work, as Mark explained: "Before finals day, we went, this place looks a bit shabby. My wife, her sister … we got a team of about five or six of us, and we just cleaned the whole place up. Painted all the fences, the building, power washed the patio, put the bunting up, got the barbecue running, got music going."

All that was left now was to play the final of a cup they'd only entered for the first time this season. Reaching a cup final is the dream for any team, but for this women’s team, in their first season, at a club which had never run a women’s team, reaching a cup final felt like a victory in itself.

But, as with the team’s founding, they weren’t happy to settle with what they had. The newly renovated clubhouse made for a fitting backdrop as Woodmansterne dominated the cup final, winning by 8 wickets in front of a jubilant home crowd.

To get to the final, then agree to host the final, and go on to win the Elite T20 Cup at their first attempt, was a remarkable achievement. The finals day was a complete success for both the team and the club, and a testament to all the players who came to play for this new side, the club who wholeheartedly backed their first women’s team, and the people who volunteered their time to make the day possible.

"That was the best day at Woodmansterne for a while, I reckon." 

Amy is still waiting for her beer.

"That’s the dream."

When asked what they would say to others thinking of starting a women’s team, their advice was simple: "I think half the advice is if you have a club that backs you, then do it. It does help if the club already exists, but I wouldn't ever say to anyone, ‘don't do it.’ … It’s weird, it's like easier than you think but harder than you expect... but I wouldn't let that put anyone off."

Mark admitted that luck played a role in their team’s success, as with every team, but he told me there’s only one way to get it: "We have hit a bit of luck along the way … but we only got that because we went for it, started the team."

As for Woodmansterne’s future, rather than basking in the glory of their T20 Cup win in their debut season, Amy and Mark are already looking ahead. After a solid season for the women’s side in 2026, they are targeting the girls set up as their next big step. The girls at Woodmansterne currently have only one team, under-12s, playing and training with soft cricket balls: "The plan next year is, now the girls are like 12 … to try and get them to our winter nets, to get them used to hardball." 

As Mark said, "The challenge now is to make sure those girls can start playing in the ladies’ team and we don’t lose them." Amy agreed with her dad, and explained her ambitious vision for the future: "A proper girls set up, like an under-9s to under-18s situation … having space for girls to develop … to have something that feeds in."

Of course, they have plans to grow the women’s side too, but they are not aiming to become a professional outfit anytime soon. Rather, they want to continue the core philosophy of fun-first cricket that makes Woodmansterne CC such a popular club: "Just keep [our] feet, keep [in] Div 1 for a bit, and then eventually, if you keep retaining people, having people coming in, you can eventually have two teams — one could be more competitive and one could be fully fun... obviously fun is the main thing across everything."

"That’s the next step for us, isn’t it? That’s the dream."