We hear from our resident sports writer and York City F. C. fan, Simon Pattinson.
I must start this month’s column with a dedication to the women’s England team and finally bringing it home in the Euro 2022 final! What a victory for them and an impressive tournament that hopefully is the springboard for women’s sport and inspires young girls to show that they too, can do this as a job. The standard of women’s football has grown over recent years and looking more locally to ourselves, the York City Ladies team has had a lot of success in the last year with promotion and silverware and hopefully, like many other women’s football teams this victory will see them get the attention that they deserve. Even before the tournament, there had been calls for the Minsterbelles to play at the LNER Community Stadium next season and this has been granted with their up-and-coming game against Leeds United on the 12th of October. It feels great to see the new era bringing together the club as one and I think this will be a hugely popular move by all fans at City.
Looking at the new York City Men’s era, the pre-season didn’t maybe quite go as well as we would have hoped but the way the season has started shows that it means nothing. Particularly the opening fixture against Woking which looked like a real team performance. If they can play to that momentum all season, it will certainly be a better season than we could have even dreamed of – but it is still early days and the big tests are still to come over the coming months of the season. City fans are very grounded in how they expect to perform this season as the National League is a whole different beast to the last time we were in the division and know this could be a case of being patient about any return to the football league.
Whilst discussing York City, I have to give a special mention to departing media officer, Dan Simmonite, who has left a mark on the club during some really tough times for fans in recent years. Having led the club through all the centenary plans to leaving Bootham Crescent (the video he created for that is something that will be treasured for a very long time), everything he has done has been with true passion and has been nothing but a credit to the club. Best of luck at the World Cup in Qatar and thank you for all the hard work you put in during that time.
During the time of writing, back-to-back victories for York City Knights all but secured their playoff positions for promotion to Super League. A big ask perhaps but what an achievement it is to get themselves back in that position once again. What a job James Ford is doing and has managed to build another impressive squad this season! Hopefully, when it comes to the next column in October, I will be sitting here writing about promotion to the Super League! What a great day for sport in York that would be, if we could see two promotions in the same year from both of our local clubs.
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