The summer heroics of Sarina Weigman's England side have helped to spark a revolution in women's football; the sport's meteoric ascent catapulting its stars to celebrity status for perhaps the first time in history.
In the Women's Super League, record crowds are flocking to grounds across the country each week to catch a glimpse of their new heroes and, on Merseyside, players like Everton's Toni Duggan and Liverpool's Missy Bo Kearns are establishing themselves as household names. But before the two homegrown talents were enjoying life in the upper echelons of the women's game, they were lining up on a pitch in south Liverpool for Mossley Hill FC.
“Missy Bo played in the boys team alongside Curtis Jones when they were Under-8s and to watch them it was just totally different," club chairman Rob Wells told the ECHO. "You would see teams coming up against them being like 'oh no'.
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"They went on to Liverpool's academy when they were about nine but Toni was here a lot later, until she was about 14. Toni was in a different world playing up front; a totally different class.”
Rob is speaking in Mossley Hill's clubhouse, where the trophy laden shelves speak of a club that has become something of an institution in the realm of Merseyside football. Established in 1924, Mossley Hill has embedded itself at the heart of the local community, providing the opportunity for hundreds of children and adults - men and women - to step out onto the south Liverpool turf each week.
While the club was founded almost a century ago, it wasn't until 2000 that a women's contingent started to develop.
"Mossley Hill ladies came about when we applied for an FA grant and as part of that grant we had to develop girls football," Rob said.
"There really was nothing out there to start with so we developed an initiative that we put back to the FA that we would go into schools and try and get interest from girls there. We started in the local area in the south of the city and worked with various schools to come in and do some coaching and then we tried to get them to start playing."
In 2004, with interest in the women's team starting to grow, the club applied for a position in the the North West Women's Regional League. But it was when Mossley Hill entered a tournament, competing against a host of clubs from around the world, that Rob and his team began to notice the vast disparity in ability, experience and resources between the English game and that of its global counterparts.
Rob said: "We entered a ladies tournament about 15 years ago and a Chinese team were invited over. They brought their national team and by half-time, they were winning by a ridiculous score of about 17-0. We realised then how far they’d developed and how far behind we were.
"There were a lot of people watching at that time and there was a message starting to generate that we need to up our game here and become a lot more professional in the way we run girls and women's football. It had to be run on a parallel level, it couldn’t be second rate and just trying to find the odd bit of funding here and there."
Over the past two decades, Mossley Hill ladies' rise up the football pyramid has seen the first team secure league promotions and pick up a score of county cup titles. The club's finest moment, however, came when they reached the fifth round of the Women’s FA Cup, defeating titans like Everton and Manchester City along the way. And it's the FA Cup that could be instrumental in keeping Mossley Hill's head above the financial water in the seasons to come.
Earlier this year, it was announced that there would be a “significant increase” in FA Cup prize money, following criticism of the discrepancy between the women’s and men’s competitions pots. The uplift will come into place this season, resulting in greater investment across the women’s professional and grassroots game.
“Financial sustainability doesn’t get any easier," Rob said. "Costs are going up all the time and you can only charge subs to a minimum if you want to keep hold of players. Our budget is about £45,000 to run all of our clubs and that’s money that we have to find in various ways, both for our men's and women's teams.
“There’s a lot of funding out there at the moment for women's football. The Weetabix Wildcats scheme- for girls aged five to 11 - in particular is a great opportunity for funding and also helps us feed into our junior system.
"The FA Cup sponsorship since the Euros has gone up and every round that we’re in the prize money increases. We’re going up to play Durham next and, even if we lose, that’s £3,000 which is a huge chunk of our funding that allows us to continue ladies football."
While the Euros have prompted a spike in demand for women's football teams across the country, Rob and his team still have to contend with the significant difficulties of running a club in the grassroots game.
“We can’t relax because its a bit of a revolving door with girls coming in and out," Rob said. "It's good to see where women's football is at the moment and I think it will continue to grow over the next few years. It has to come through schemes like the Wildcats and the likes of Liverpool and Everton encouraging women to get involved.”
Reflecting on the success of Mossley Hill alums like Toni Duggan and Missy Bo Kearns, Rob beams: "We're really proud of what they've achieved.
“The ground is set now for the women's game. It's a case of having the people to drive it forward and hopefully it will get bigger and bigger."
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