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Hope springs eternal for England women's team
All the hackneyed cliches about being a woman in a man's world have been heard and read a million times over by England legend Hope Powell.
The 42-year-old, who this year celebrates a decade in charge of the England women's football team, has fielded umpteen questions about ploughing her own furrow in a male-dominated footballing sphere for many a year – and takes them all with a pinch of salt.
Powell, capped 66 times by her country in a sparkling international career which saw her score 36 goals, has always let her achievements do the talking and leaves the conjecture to others.
Having claimed countless honours in the women's game, with Powell a three-times winner of the FA Women's Cup and league and cup victor with Croydon in 1996, the accomplishments have continued in her second career – in the managerial realm.
Powell, appointed as England's first-ever full-time national coach in 1998, was awarded an OBE in 2002 and the following year was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame, while becoming the first woman to be awarded the UEFA Pro Licence.
Quite simply, her achievements stand with the best of them in the footballing world – male or female – with gender pretty much a side-issue.
For the record, Powell completed her coaching qualification alongside the likes of Stuart Pearce, Sammy Lee and Steve Cotterill, but she is not interested in one-upmanship or name-dropping.
Just putting something back into the game she loves and graced on the pitch is her paramount concern, with Powell's labour of love recently seeing her drop in at West Riding County FA headquarters at Fleet Lane to coach both aspiring female – and male – coaches at a specially-arranged coaching demonstration and question and answer session.
Undeniably, the game is indebted to the work carried out by Powell, who has helped set up a women's player development centre at Loughborough University, with the country slowly accepting that women's coaches have a part to play in a male-dominated environment.
Powell said: "I've enjoyed playing, coaching and managing. But I certainly don't miss running around any more and having to do pre-season training and the snow and the cold, that's for sure!
"I just think I'm fortunate to have been involved in the game every day of my working life and I'm thankful for that.
"I've had my playing time and now it's other people's time and I'm helping out in another way.
"The game is definitely changing from where it was when I was playing. There's more support and better coaching opportunities now for women, and people are there to specifically work on women's football. Standards have raised and we need to keep raising them in order to make the national team better and provide more playing opportunities for young girls who want to play, along with coaching opportunities.
"The coaching demonstration here was quite well received. Quite a healthy turn-out of about 50-odd coaches came along and it went well.
"If what I've done on the pitch and in terms of coaching can inspire women currently playing the game, then that's fantastic.
"Apart from me, Maureen Manley is the only other person with a Pro Licence and she achieved that last summer and was the second woman in the country to do so.
"We've got ambitions to get more females to qualify, not just for the Pro Licence but for the A Licence as well.
"So hopefully, in the future, many more will qualify.
"At the moment, what I'm involved in is mentoring female coaches and it is something we're striving to do. It's about creating more opportunities for females to become more involved.
"It's a work in progress and it will probably continue to be forever and a day, but we're getting there."
On her visit up north, Powell added: "Yorkshire is a hotbed of footballing talent for the women's game.
"The Yorkshire area is heavily represented at under-15 (international) level and, historically, produces a lot of talented players such as Sue Smith and Steph Houghton – and you can also go further back to Karen Walker and Gillian Coulthard, who got 119 caps for England.
"It's a strong area, and nationally we want to be providing players from all areas. That's what we are striving for."
Hope springs eternal for England at this summer's European Championships, which start in late August. And whisper it gently, a possible title challenge may even be on the cards.
Presiding over England's bid for glory is long-serving boss Powell, who will lead her country into a third successive championship finals.
And she has reason aplenty to feel her troops could be dark horses – following their incremental recent improvement.
Buoyed by victory in the eight-nation Cyprus Cup in February, England will arrive in Finland in fine fettle, having reached the last- eight of the last major competition they took part in – the World Cup in China in 2007.
And while loath to make predictions, Powell is quietly confident about England's hopes. The ultra-competitive and compelling race for the FA Women's Premier League title, with Everton pushing Arsenal all the way in their bid for a sixth successive crown, proved more than anything that the game at the highest level is in the pink.
On England's bid for glory, she said: "Germany, obviously being world and European champions, are the benchmark for everyone. You have to say they are odds-on favourites again.
"The Scandinavian sides always do pretty well, but I feel the gap between the best and the rest is getting smaller.
"We are very ambitious to keep improving and the fact that we've qualified for another major tournament is important. And come the summer, we'll certainly be giving it our best shot.
"The Premier League has been a lot more competitive this year and that could help us. Everyone knows about the dominance that Arsenal have had in recent years, as Doncaster Belles once did many years ago.
"But there has been really healthy competition this year and that shows that the game and standards at clubs are improving all the time and it can only benefit the league and help in my job.
"The more competitive the division, the better the players there are available for me."
Pressed for a prediction, she added: "I'd rather not answer that!
"We know what we're up against and we just need to make sure we prepare as well as we can to give ourselves the best possible chance.
"Hopefully, one day we'll be challenging to be the best in the world."
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