Barnsley FC women vs Barnsley Women’s FC?

This is going to sound ignorant, and it is, but I’m trying to learn.

Can someone please explain how the two Barnsley women teams that played this evening are related in the football pyramid? BFC women are tied to BFC and Oakwell (I think?), and are Barnsley WFC a completely independent women’s team?

Are they in the same football pyramid and which one is where?

I’m wondering why there are two - is it just historical?

Ta.

 

They are at the same level in the pyramid.

However womens team at Oakwell plays in the Northern division, whereas the other ones are in the midlands league. Not sure how playing in Sheffield they still call themselves Barnsley.

 

Here goes...
When I was a manager of Barnsley Ladies and Juniors FC, we were approached to partner up with Barnsley FC. This was around 2014. We agreed. So then the name became Barnsley FC Juniors and Ladies.
A few years later, the club was took over by Steve Gates and Steve Maddocks. They tried to change the name to Barnsley Women. All teams said no, except 1st team. Thete may have been another age group, i cant remember. They left the club and set up Barnsley Women, only had 1?? team, the first team, again maybe another junior age group. If anyone can remember, these 2 men were behind the plans to build a stadium on Keresforth fields, soon to be a new school.
Barnsley Women have now a few junior girls teams, but Barnsley FC Ladies are still the biggest female club in Barnsley AND THE OLDEST regardless what people may say.

I hope folk understand this

 

Thanks @nomad and MDG, info much appreciated

 

There's only one league system, both teams operate within it. Here's a decent explainer: Women's Leagues and Competitions: An Introduction (thefa.com)

Some years ago the team associated with Barnsley FC split. It was acrimonious, neither team is likely to want to heal the rift. Nor do I know any details as to why.

The team that became Barnsley Women FC retained the league registration for the senior team, while a new team formed which retained all of the junior teams. The latter became Barnsley FC Ladies, which later recreated a senior team. This is the team that was incorporated into the club last summer.

Having retained the original registration with the league, Barnsley Women FC have been further up the pyramid until this season, when Barnsley FC Ladies (renamed Barnsley FC Women last year by the club) were promoted to the same league (Tier 4).

Since the 4th tier is geographically split, Barnsley Women FC were allocated this summer to a different league, otherwise they'd have been in the same league. It appears a number of players have left the established team at that level to join Barnsley FC Women.]

The confusion between the two is certainly a hindrance to both teams at senior level, but it's worth knowing too that both teams have full junior setups down to 7-8 year olds, so are providing loads and loads of opportunity for girls to get involved in football. And the standard in our area at youngers ages is really, really high compared with other areas.

 

I believe the facilities in Barnsley were not up to the required standards, so they had to move out of the Area.
I could be wrong MDG

 

I'd like to follow their progress a little closer, but there's bugger all on the main site. It makes the Men's Results pages, which has about 25-50% of the match details, look actually Wikipedia-esque.

 

Their twitter feed gets updated fairly regularly.

I'd say the Barnsley FC based womens team have now surpassed the others and have far better facilities and resources behind them to push on further up the pyramid.

 

Thanks. I'm not on Twitter or X.

 

I believe they are committed to returning to Barnsley once they can find a suitable ground. The long term plan is to build their own.

 

Btw "our" lasses won 1-0 last night in front of a very respectable crowd of 459

 

The other team have their own website
https://www.barnsleywomensfc.org/

 

The main site doesn't even have the mens' team page up to date, so its more a case of neglecting the comms than neglecting the women imho