Second City derby marks 30 years of the Aston Villa name for Villa Women
Aston Villa Women play Birmingham City in the Women's Super League at Villa Park on Sunday, with kick-off at 14:00 GMT. The Women's Super League is the top tier of women's football in England. It is also a derby, the local rivalry between two clubs from the same city, and this one carries an anniversary. The women's team officially took the Aston Villa name 30 years ago, and the club is marking it with the fixture.
The team arrives at the match in a period of change. Aston Villa sacked manager Natalia Arroyo at the end of September, after a start to the season that brought no wins. Brian Sorensen is now in charge on an interim basis, meaning on a temporary footing while the club works through its plans. Sorensen takes charge of a squad that will be keen to turn the season around in front of a home crowd.
The anniversary has also led to a historical search. Aston Villa Women have launched a research project called "Roots, Rise and Reach", which aims to uncover periods of the women's team's past that were never properly recorded. Aston Villa's own research has already turned up a 1957 newspaper report of a match between an unofficial Aston Villa Ladies team and Birmingham City. That means the two sides were meeting on the pitch long before the modern league existed.
It is a neat find for a derby week. Football clubs often treat their early history as a footnote, yet many women's teams were founded and then forgotten, their games reported in a few lines or not at all. Digging through old papers gives the club a story to tell, and gives supporters a sense of where they have come from.
The club's leadership is involved too. Maggie Murphy is managing director at Aston Villa working on the women's team, and Marisa Ewers is director of women's football, overseeing recruitment, contract renewals and the football staff.
For anyone new to the game, a derby is simply a match between neighbours, and those matches tend to produce the most noise. Kick-off is at 14:00 GMT on Sunday, and the fixture is at Villa Park, the club's home stadium in Birmingham. Whatever the result, the game gives both clubs a reason to look back at a shared history that goes back further than many fans would have guessed.
