Spurs Ladies to be rebranded Tottenham Hotspur Women next season

There’s big news coming out of Tottenham Hotspur Ladies today. In fact, we should probably start referring to the team by a different name going forward, as the club announced that starting next season the club will be rebranded as Tottenham Hotspur Women.

This is fantastic news. More and more English women’s football clubs are heading this direction and are going away from the “Ladies” moniker, which some feel is diminutive, and embracing “Women” in the name. These aren’t “ladies,” this is a team of highly-trained, extremely good footballers who are also women. I like it — Tottenham Hotspur Women has a very nice ring to it.

In addition to the name change, the club also announced that it is appointing a first-ever Head of Women’s Football position. Heather Cowan is joining Spurs from a similar position at Birmingham City Women and “will oversee all day-to-day operations.” Cowan had this to say in the official announcement on Spurs Women’s website:

“I am thrilled to have joined Spurs at a time where women’s football is really starting to flourish. The Club has a wonderful opportunity to create an exciting future and a lasting legacy in the women’s game and I’m looking forward to playing a part in that.

“We shall be working hard to develop a structure and culture that enables talented female footballers to thrive. We’re striving for continued success and to build something that fans, players and staff are all proud to be a part of.”

This is exciting stuff, but the release still dances around the biggest question still hovering over the club at the moment: with Spurs one win away from clinching promotion to the top flight of English women’s football for the first time in their history, will the parent club invest in Spurs Women and help them transition to becoming a fully-professional football club as demanded by the Women’s Super League?

We don’t know yet, but these are promising signs. I’d like to think these announcements are just a prelude to an even bigger announcement coming the moment Spurs clinch promotion, which they can do either this weekend if Durham Women lose to Leicester City or Wednesday, May 1, if Spurs beat Aston Villa.