West Ham back on TV

West Ham women are back on TV with the launch of BBC Squad goals the second series featuring West Ham Women

‘No-one in here is too good for this team. No-one here is a princess, no-one is a prima-donna. You work, you graft, you fight for the badge that’s on your chest because that’s bigger than the name on the back” screams West Ham United captain Gilly Flaherty in the opening scenes of the latest documentary series focusing on the fortunes of a women’s football team.

Produced by Curious Films and narrated by actress Jamie Winstone, Squad Goals follows the West Ham United Women’s team through the truncated 2019/20 season and premiered on BBC Three via iPlayer on Saturday.

The success last season of Britain’s Youngest Football Boss, which centred around the club’s teenage Managing Director Jack Sullivan attracting viewing figures of close to 2 million on the country’s flagship television channel, prompted executive producer Dov Freedman to film a second series from a different point of view.

He explained: “The decision was made maybe to focus a little bit more on the players in the second season. The sort of feedback we were getting from the audience was everyone really connected with the players and wanted to know more about their lives.

“If we could make the audience care about the players and everyone at West Ham as characters, they’d really care about what happened on the pitch”.

In the opening episode, fresh from reaching the FA Cup final the previous season, manager Matt Beard tells the squad before their first game of the campaign away to defending champions Arsenal :”We will win the league”, – they finished eighth.

Sullivan who asks “how do you measure success?” during the show, would point to the 24,790 fans who paid to watch the team play Spurs at the London Stadium last October as proof that the exposure generated by the first series has enabled his players to win hearts.

He said: “For us, it was a huge achievement for a team that was semi-pro just two years ago. It showed you how the fans really wanted to support the women’s team at West Ham”.

The new Series is back on BBC iPlayer at  https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=west+ham

 

About Sean Whetstone

I am Season Ticket Holder in West stand lower at the London Stadium and before that, I used to stand in the Sir Trevor Brooking Lower Row R seat 159 in the Boleyn Ground and in the Eighties I stood on the terraces of the old South Bank. I am a presenter on the West Ham Podcast called MooreThanJustaPodcast.co.uk. A Blogger on WestHamTillIdie.com a member of the West Ham Supporters Advisory Board (SAB), Founder of a Youtube channel called Mr West Ham Football at http://www.youtube.com/MrWestHamFootball, I am also the associate editor here at Claret and Hugh. Life Long singer of bubbles! Come on you Irons! Follow me at @Westhamfootball on twitter