It’s been a tumultuous 2019 for us Bristol City Women fans apart from a thrilling 1-0 win over Birmingham City in Marc Skinners farewell match in January. The year has gone from bad to worse on and off the field starting with a torrid second half of last season, with the low point an abysmal 2-0 defeat to Durham in the FA cup. We only picked up one win in the last eight matches to taint what was a very good start to the season.
The now all too familiar summer exodus of players reared its head again with the hugely influential fans favourite Lucy Graham leaving after just one season amongst others. Although thankfully and rather surprisingly, our award winning Goalkeeper Sophie Baggaley chose to stay.
Then we move onto the ‘R’ word ..Robin ! The Bristol women’s team from when we were ‘Bristol Academy WFC’ and hugely successful under Mark Sampson have always been affectionately known as the ‘Vixens’ but in March the Bristol City FC umbrella announced it would rebrand itself completely with a nice shiny logo and every team in its organisation would now be known as the Robin’s. Many of us loyal Vixens fans became very angry at this because we felt the club were taking the women’s identity away from them and some of us who have no interest in the mens team thought about not supporting the team any longer. Thankfully over the course of the summer the mood has mellowed.