Beth Hepple is spearheading Durham Women's Championship promotion push

She should really be a trailblazer for the new generation of female players, a group following in the footsteps of the likes of Jill Scott and Steph Houghton, the original pioneers who transformed women’s football in this country from a niche pursuit into a mainstream activity, commanding broadcasting slots and column inches and securing sponsorship deals and commercial tie-ups that have changed the sport’s financial landscape.

Yet as we speak ahead of Hepple’s next training session for Durham, she has something other than football on her mind. Before she can pull on her boots at her club’s Maiden Castle training base, she has to ensure the pub she helps run is ready to reopen at the end of lockdown. She might be one of the best finishers in the country, but when the world returns to something approaching normality, she will find herself selling shots as well as taking them.

“I live in a pub in Birtley,” explained Hepple. “I’m actually in the pub now doing this interview, looking at the jobs I need to do! It’s my partner’s family business, and it’s obviously not great at the minute with everything that’s going on.

“I just about manage to fit the work around the training and the matches. As a team, we have a recovery session on a Monday night, which is on Zoom, and then we train together Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and normally play our games on a Sunday. I guess you could say life is quite full on.”

Women’s football has changed out of all recognition in the last decade, but as Hepple’s experiences show, the rewards have been concentrated at the very highest level. England’s top dozen or so players – Wearsider Houghton, the national team captain, for example – have become sporting celebrities. The top clubs in the Women’s Super League – Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea – have begun to emulate their respective men’s sides by recruiting the very best talent from around the world.

But just as the men’s game has become increasingly stratified since the advent of the Premier League, so women’s football has begun to exhibit a series of even bigger divides. Only two clubs in the Championship are professional, and while Durham’s tie-up with Durham University offers them a degree of financial security, the club’s players are either part-time, like Hepple, or students combining an academic degree with their football.

Sunderland Ladies, once one of the pioneers of the women’s game and the breeding ground for the likes of Houghton, Scott, Lucy Bronze and Jordan Nobbs, were forced out of the top two divisions in the reorganisation that led to the creation of the Super League. Some have undoubtedly benefited from that shake-up. But, increasingly, it is hard to claim that the women’s game as a whole has moved forward uniformly.

“The levels of investment you’re seeing at the top of women’s football is what has been needed to take the game on to the next level,” said Hepple. “But it’s such a small amount of players, especially English players, that can actually reach that.

“It’s a difficult one. There’s one bit of you saying it’s brilliant for the game and it’s what we all need – you need that professionalism and investment – but then at the same time, it’s difficult because half of the league just can’t keep up.

“Then you are look at the league below that, which is us, and you have two professional teams and the rest of us are semi-pro. How do you make that step up? Aston Villa were brilliant in our league last year, but they’ve made the step up and you can see straight away that it’s just such a huge massive jump.

“I don’t really know what the answer is to it. The exposure the women’s game is getting is brilliant, and it’s brilliant to see people like Steph, Jordan and Jill getting all the benefits they’ve worked for over the years. But you do wonder where the game as a whole is going. I guess you just hope that, over time, all of that filters down.”

Hepple can see both sides of the discussion because she appreciates exactly where the likes of Houghton and Scott have come from. When Houghton first broke through at Sunderland Ladies, she had to play in a cast-off adult kit that had been donated by the men’s team. She was banned from playing with the boys at her South Hetton primary school and laughed at when she suggested she wanted to pursue playing football for a career.

By the time Hepple was starting to emerge as a talented youngster a decade or so ago, many of those barriers had already been broken down. For that, she, and a generation of players like her, will always be indebted to the likes of Houghton, who actually coached her in her own early days at Sunderland.

“I played for Sunderland academy Under-10s, and Steph used to coach me,” said Hepple. “I was very little at the time, and she was obviously still young herself too. I was about eight I think – it’s pretty cool to say you’ve been coached by the England captain. Steph was a massive player at Sunderland then – it really was like meeting your idol really – but then she obviously moved on.

“By the time I started playing, women’s football was already really starting to grow. Players my age have an awful lot to be thankful to people like Steph Houghton and Jill Scott for. They really paved the way for the rest of us.

“When I was playing in primary school, I still think I was the only girl on the team, but it’s gradually changing and I don’t really think that would be the case anymore. I think my era was probably the first where there was a proper girls’ league, and it’s because of people like Steph, Jill and Jordan that that’s happened. They blazed a trail for the rest of us.”

Hepple started playing football for Lumley Ladies under current Durham Women boss Lee Sanders. The club morphed into Cestria Girls, and eventually evolved into the current Durham set-up after a series of amalgamations.

Thanks in no small part to Sanders’ vision, Durham have grown into one of the country’s leading women’s sides, with the tie-up with the University enabling them to tap into a pool of talent they would otherwise have found it very hard to access.

Without a men’s team to prop them up, Durham have had to things differently, but as results on the pitch have proved over the last few seasons, their approach clearly works.

“It’s a totally different set-up to a lot of the other teams that we compete against,” said Hepple, ahead of tomorrow's top-of-the-table battle with Sheffield United. “The education side of things we can offer is massive. I got my degree myself, and it’s like a back-up plan really. I did my degree at Sunderland, but I’ve always had the option to go and do my Masters at Durham, and it’s amazing to think you can have that for free while playing. There’s so many girls that have come to the club based on that.”

Hepple is the star though, and having been part of Durham’s evolution from the club’s inception, the Wearsider would love to help the Wildcats win promotion to the Super League.

“It would mean so much to do that with this club,” she said. “Much more than with anyone else. I’ve been here for so long, so I think it means more to me because I’ve been here for such a long time. If you moved on and did it with someone else, I don’t think it would have anything like the same feeling. It’s always been my dream to do it with Durham – and that still stands.”