With figures for the most recent financial year showing Fulham lost £23.3 million - that's an increase of £9.4 million from the previous year - cuts had to be made. The fact tat they spent £30 million on six players shows that the spending and high wages for the Premiership team had to stop somewhere and despite cuts in the money available to the first team, the major snip has been in the women's set-up.  The London Evening Standard estimated that it cost £500,000 to run the Fulham Ladies side each season, which in terms of Ladies football is big money.  They turned professional three years ago in a blaze of glory and dragged Arsenal Ladies into semi-professionalism, with Doncaster Belles, Leeds and Bristol Rovers following them.  However, the lack of positive action by the Football Association to develop a professional Women's set-up in this country has lead to Mohamed Al-fayed having to chop the funds to the Cottagers' Ladies team.

Starting in 1993 with a place in Greater London Women's Regional Division Four and playing their games on Hackney Marshes, Fulham won five promotions in seven years, but the way they shot up the Leagues in the last two has taken the game by storm.

A recent article in "Four Four Two" magazine revealed that Women's Premier League side Birmingham City have players paying £4 a week to play the game compared with Fulham's squad believed to be on anything from £15,000 to £50,000 a year.  The inequality is clear to see and perhaps like the men's Premier League, the bubble had to burst.  The article claims that Al-Fayed put £3 million in over a period of three years, which is to end in May 2003.  So he is literally saying that the well is now dry.  The date was significant as that was when the FA had aimed to have a professional league started in England, which has not come about.  It appears that the financial backing is not there for such an organisation and the current structure will stay in place for the time being.

Fulham are not the only club who put serious funding into their Ladies team.  Figures quoted by the magazine are Leeds United (£80,000 per annum), a similar amount invested by Charlton and Arsenal players getting appearance money and sponsorship from the men's team.  But what do the teams have to look forward to ?

The way that football is approached in America is completely different and that is why several of the top players in the UK have gone to USA to find their fortune and fame.  There is a professional league there and the Americans find that women's football is a viable enough to sustain an eight team professional league now entering it's third season.  One thing has hugely helped them and that was the USA ladies winning the 1999 World Cup.  The exposure that gave the women's game in America was massive.  In front of their countrymen and women in the nation where 'soccer' was always a "kick in the grass", the game took off.  Strangely enough, although the men have been in the World Cup finals, it is the success of the women that has really stolen the limelight and that could be down to one in particular ... Mia Hamm.

Now a globally recognised name, Hamm has dragged the sport into one of the most popular in the States with millions of girls taking up the game.  It is a similar picture in the England with FA figures claiming 1.4 million girls under 15 play in some sort of organised match each week, but it appears that the step to a professional set-up here lacks the push that the Americans put behind their league.

Why is that ?  After all women's football has been around in the country since 1895, when the first women's match was recorded.  Most notably, the Ladies came to the fore during World War I, when Dick Kerr's Ladies drew big crowds during the conflict to raise £70,000 for charities and military hospitals.  The team were so popular that on Boxing Day 1920, Goodison Park hosted a match that attracted 53,000 spectators.  Banned from playing at league grounds in 1921, the game still was played by ladies, but it was only in 1969 that a Women's FA was set up with 44 clubs initially.

1971 saw the first WFA Cup, 1972 the first international match with Scotland beating England and finally in 1983, the Association was allowed to affiliate to the FA.  Further progress of putting the game in the public eye was secured in 1989, when Channel 4 ran a series of programmes covering the women's game and this inspired the inauguration of a national league of 24 clubs in 1991.  In July 1993, the FA set up a Women's Football Committee to promote, administer and develop the game for ladies.

But the international side have failed to qualify from their European pool for the World Cup in China this year, although the under-19s reached the quarter-finals in the World Cup for their age group.  And the game continues to grow.

There is now an established pyramid of Women's Football in the country. There are four levels to this, with the FA Nationwide Premier League at the top, which consists of the National Division, fed into by the Northern and Southern Divisions below it.  34 teams pay their football at this top level and there are relegation and promotion between those Divisions and the next tier down.

The tier below this contains the four regionalised Combination Leagues, which has ten Regional Leagues underneath it (such as the Greater London Regional League which Spurs Ladies play in).  The Regional Leagues have a number of divisions in them containing up to 70 teams and it is promotion through these leagues, that is the target of those side sin the County Leagues which prop up the pyramid.  At the moment there are 10 County Leagues and there are plans to add to this number as the game develops even further.

However, a recent report by the Football Foundation on the lack of football facilities across the country showed up that there are 94% of sites nationwide which do not have female changing rooms. This figure is 92% for the London area and central London, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent were identified as the worst area for the women's game.  The two year survey of the grassroots game showed that great investment is needed to bring these pitches and changing facilities up to scratch, with the FA putting a figure of £2 billion on the required funding.

So, the initial thrust of interest in the women's game continues unabated, but where will the money come form to back it up ?  The sponsorship gained by Tottenham Ladies from their male counterparts will help develop the teams and aid with expenses, but there must be input from the Government to deal with the problem of grass roots facilities.  If they put pitches and changing rooms out there, people will come and play on them ... and with the most rapidly growing area of participation being in girl's football, that means that there will be more space for them to get on a pitch and play.

There is a long way to go and with other more important things on the ruling party's mind at the moment, football facilities is probably a long way down their list of priorities, but there are more benefits to providing sports pitches and changing rooms, both in terms of social inclusion and health, as well as providing an outlet for people's energies.  We will have to hope that when the dark clouds clear that the game can go on ... and on.