Rehanne previews Liverpool: “We’ve got to be on top of our game”

At her pre-match press conference at Hotspur Way on Thursday afternoon, Rehanne Skinner commented on Sunday’s opposition as Liverpool visit Brisbane Road for our first home game of the Women’s Super League season.

“Stepping into the league is difficult, we all know that,” she said. “It’s a top team in the Championship coming into the WSL, which still creates problems for consistency. I had it myself as we weren’t consistent week in, week out when I first came here. It’s always going to be a challenge. 

“They’ve shown they can get a result against a top team and it was a bit different the following week, but Matt’s is a hard working team who are organised and make life as difficult for everybody as possible, so we’ve got to be prepared to be on the top of our game. 

“Our most important thing is that we’ve got to follow on from the positive response in the Reading game and the way that we performed in that game. We want to make sure that we get some consistency ourselves this weekend going into this one.”

Sunday marks the beginning of a new chapter in Spurs Women’s history, playing the first home game at a new stadium in Brisbane Road.

“We’ve had a really positive response,” Rehanne said regarding the move. “We’ve sold out our season tickets, so that’s going to contribute to this game. 

“It’s a new partnership at Leyton Orient, so the relationship with the community is going to take a little bit of time to evolve as well and for people to be aware of who we are and what we’re about. Whilst it’s closer to Tottenham, there’s still a bit of work to do I think for us as a club to keep growing our fanbase. 

“We definitely had an improved following and raised our average attendance towards the end of last season, so that was good and we’re just trying to make sure that we get that right in this new ground. It will probably take a few games to try to get us up to speed with that, but we’re certainly hoping to keep including everybody within the community to try to keep evolving our fanbase in that particular area. 

“We’re looking good for the weekend and hopefully we sell a few more before we get to that point.”

But Brisbane Road won’t be completely new to Rehanne and her team, who used this week to have a training session at the new home.

“We were due to play in three big stadiums so we prepared everything associated to pitch sizes and all the rest of it for that, so we’ve just adjusted to then going into a slightly different pitch dimension,” she said. “We didn’t want to do it before this point but the preparation we had going into this weekend was great. 

“It’s good for the players to see what the environment is and have a bit of a feel for that before we get to that point. It just settles things in on a matchday so we all know what we’re doing. It makes it more like home because we’ve been involved in it as well as having a visit. We’re in a good place ahead of starting the season at home there this weekend.”

Following Sunday’s fixture, we will host Manchester City and Everton at Brisbane Road either side of a trip to Crawley to take on Brighton & Hove Albion. 

“Having three games there enables us to try to keep drawing on that fanbase.” Rehanne added. “We’ve got a bit of consistency there then that keeps drawing people back as opposed to it being a little bit more sporadic, so I think it will be really good for us over the next month or so to get those games in at that ground.

“We’ve been looking forward to playing there and are really excited about the new relationship we’ve developed with Leyton Orient. They’re incredibly supportive of everything we’re trying to do and the women’s game, having a women’s team themselves. The relationship is going to get stronger and stronger between the two clubs.”

Regarding team news, Rehanne had a positive update on the progress of Kerys Harrop and Chioma Ubogagu. 

“We’re looking in a better position than we were before the international break, so we’ve got several players that weren’t available to us at Reading that are in a much better position now,” she explained. “Several restricted minutes has been a part of the process unfortunately for us so far this season, but we’re going to be almost at full strength from the perspective of the ones that aren’t longer term injuries. 

“The positive is Kerys Harrop is much much closer, so within the next few weeks we’re hoping to have her back on the pitch and obviously next week we’ll be in a position to have Chi back with us as well, so that’s a positive.”

Away from this weekend’s game, Rehanne was asked for her view on last week’s independent investigation that found systemic abuse and misconduct in the NWSL, specifically in relation to Amy Turner and Angharad James, who signed for Spurs from Orlando Pride in the summer.

“First of all, the report was harrowing to be honest,” Rehanne said. “It’s heartbreaking to see that so many professional women have been affected and let down with a failed system really that’s not supported them through their careers in doing the things that they have been paid to do and love to do. It’s put a dampener on a lot of that for a lot of people, so a system failure that absolutely needed highlighting and needed to be resolved. 

“This coming out, you can only hope it puts a lot of the recommendations that were put in place in what was a very detailed and much needed report, that things are rectified properly and it’s been a huge learning curve for something that should never have happened in the first place. 

“The biggest thing for me personally with all of this is that everybody’s got to be in a position to go into work to enjoy what they do and be in an environment that’s supportive and respectful and safe. That for me is disgraceful, the things that have happened in that situation, but the positive is that it’s been highlighted and there’s now a way of moving forward. Let’s hope that gets put into action very quickly. 

“Ultimately, the situation in and around Orlando, I don’t have all of the details for that. I know it’s one of a number of a selection of things that have cropped up across the NWSL of late. I’ve got two players that are really enjoying the environment that they’re in here and are really pleased with the move and coming back to the UK. We’re supportive of all of our players and the environment is really important to me. 

“They’re really thriving in that environment now so it’s a fantastic shift for them to come back and be closer to family and get back to being in a position where they love the game and want to play in the right setting. I’m glad to have them and that’s the most important thing.

“There are definitely situations where an abuse of power has happened in a multitude of different ways. Unfortunately, the women’s game has not been governed as well as it could’ve been in recent years, but things have definitely been put in place and there’s a support system in place in the WSL for our players and the PFA is a huge part of that. 

“The most important thing is to safeguard and ensure that people have got a voice and that they know where to go to be able to have that voice. We’ve got systems in place to try to help support that and that’s something that we try to advocate for and ultimately hope that that’s the case across everywhere within the WSL. We want to make sure we keep growing the game in the way that people who have worked incredibly hard to get to where we want to get to have grown it. 

“We certainly don’t want the reputation or credibility of that to crumble through a couple of people’s behaviours that are inappropriate, so I hope that we’re now getting to a point where it’s come out and it’s probably a bit worse before it gets better, because everything’s got to come out in the wash. Then we can all move forward with real clear actions and hopefully the report helps them to move forward with that.

“The biggest, most important thing is that the players need to have a safe space to be able to go to to voice the challenges that they face if they’re in that situation. The clarity on that needs to be really obvious. The processes that are in place need to be really clear to people when they do want to raise complaints or concerns about those sorts of things and it’s apparent that that wasn’t in place for people who were trying to report these things in the NWSL for quite a while. 

“Off the back of that, the process around how that’s managed and how those people are removed from the game is absolutely paramount. It shouldn’t be that people should be able to move from club to club without a consequence attached to that. It should’ve been flagged much earlier to save a lot of things that have gone on, so I think the governing bodies have a responsibility to ensure that everybody is adhering to those types of processes and protocols and are making those things clear so that, for anybody, they know how to make sure that doesn’t escalate into something negative and isn’t covered up in the process. 

“It’s important that the right people are in the game who want to evolve the game to the right level, and are definitely in it for the reason to support the players and their successes moving forward. Those things are really key right now.”

Lastly, Rehanne was also asked about how her experiences with the Lionesses shaped her personal development as a manager, after Ellie Brazil discussed Rehanne’s experience with the England national teams earlier in the week.

“I was involved with England from 2006, so I’ve spent most of my career in some age group or another with England and I think that was my exposure quite early on to the expectation of what a high performance environment needed to look like in order to be successful at the top end of the game,” she said. “From that time to the time we’re at now, the support systems and staff and the holistic approach to player development has evolved significantly over that period of time and over the length of my career to date. 

“The most important factors for me are that player development is the thing that actually drives their capabilities to perform as a team. If the individuals are improving and understand their roles, then they naturally contribute to the wider good of the team. I think it’s really important to dedicate time to players and what they want to try to strive towards themselves to be able to offer opportunities and support around what their strengths are and how to bring that out and make that a real super strength if you like. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time working around ways where you can devise individual sessions to get the most out of repetition and technical outcomes to try to improve players performances as well as linking that into units and position specific roles and things like that. That’s come out of a lot of the stuff that we did with the national teams, because naturally they’re in club football so you’re having touch points from a distance a lot of the time based on the time you actually have access to those individuals. A club and country individual development plan is probably the most positive way of approaching it so that the players are actually excelling in both environments. 

“The work that I did with managers over that period of time, there were a lot of concerns where the time was precious and the team is the most important thing, but the individuals are what make the team so you’ve got to try to enhance what they do in order to make them as effective as you can. I’m a big believer in working with individuals and them knowing that I’m invested in them. I want to put the time into them to try to help them move forward to the best of their ability, so that when they go and play a game they always show us the best of what they’ve got and that’s my philosophy really that we worked with a lot when I was in the England setup at all ages.”