Yesterday was the SSE Women’s FA Cup Final 2017, the third time we’ve been and the third time it has been played at Wembley. If you want an afternoon of affordable football then a trip to the home of football is what you need.

The SSE Women’s FA Cup Final 2017 happened yesterday, Manchester City Women v Birmingham City Ladies. We go every year, as I’ve found it’s a really affordable way to watch football at Wembley. Plus there is a great atmosphere!

This year the FA ran the Kids go Free promotion again, so we were able to buy tickets for the three of us for £20.00. One adult, one student and one child.

What a day it was! Last week we found out we will be working with the FA to help promote Women’s football and football for girls. If you’ve followed our footballing journey you may remember H was playing every Saturday at Carshalton Athletic (who let girls play for free). We stopped around the time we had our gas leak and we got out of the habit of going. Well, we’re starting again.. and there’ll be more on that in the future.

Back to Wembley and the SSE Women’s FA Cup Final 2017. We received hospitality tickets for the Bobby Moore Suite. The posh part of Wembley – and we were right next to the Man City Women bench. We were also right next to the steps the players ascend to be presented with the FA Cup and medals.

The seats were AMAZING. Funnily enough, the ones we had bought were on the next block along, a row behind! But those were plastic seats, not padded comfort ones.

Manchester City Women are on a roll at the moment. In the Women’s Super League you have a lot of teams who don’t seem to get the support from their Men’s team and you can tell. This isn’t the case for Man City Women, who dominated the game. I’m happy that Birmingham City Ladies also got a goal as they deserved it.

H loved seeing England players Steph Houghton, Jill Scott, Lucy Bronze, Toni Duggan and Isabel Christansen play. It was great seeing Carli Lloyd play too – she’s playing for Man City Women until the end of the current FA WSL Spring Series. She’s one serious US Women’s footballer and the FIFA World Player of the Year.

The atmosphere in the ground made the game for me. We had mexican waves (of course) and noise. Teams weren’t too segregated, so you could watch as a neutral or for one of the teams and enjoy yourself. It’s a brilliant place to play and when the game ended you could see how much winning the FA Cup meant to Man City Women – it was their first time. They really deserved it.

For me, seeing the game gain in popularity can only be a good thing. Women’s football has always felt like it’s at the level of lower league football which is fine – but now things seem to be moving in a very positive way. In an interview I read recently Casey Stoney said, the opportunities are now there – you might not get to play for England but you get to play. Players like Casey and the teams we watched yesterday are making this happen for future generations of girls.

I find myself mellowing towards teams that I would never in a billion years follow the men’s version of. That has to be a positive thing!

It’s a really exciting time to follow Women’s football. We’ll be watching Tottenham against Blackburn Rovers in a couple of weeks. Tottenham recently completed the treble in their league, though are still an amateur side. We’re keeping everything crossed that they gain promotion to the Women’s Super League and become a dominant football team. So much of that is down to the support of the main club.

With a record attendance yesterday of 35,271 and them opening the upper levels of Wembley, Women’s football is so affordable, accessible and brilliant. Trust me when I say this, buy a ticket for the 2018 final when they go on sale around September-October time. You will not regret it.

Women’s football has been around for years. There’s a lot of information over at The FA’s site. Birmingham Ladies were formed in 1969.

We bought tickets and also received tickets for the SSE Women’s FA Cup Final 2017 from BritMums as part of the FA Project. This does not affect our opinion in any way. We will receive a fee for our work. Thank you to Britmums and the FA for yesterday, we had a wonderful day. 

Our previous trips to Wembley for the Women’s FA Cup Final in 2015 and 2016.