Buoyed by recent victory over Manchester United, Durham are thriving without the need for attachment to a men’s club

It is a clear, crisp, good-to-be-alive January day in a green, wooded Durham valley and Lee Sanders has a bright future to map out.

Beneath an unbroken blue sky and illuminated by low winter sunshine, reconstruction work on the £31m overhaul of Maiden Castle, Durham University’s sports centre, continues apace but the builders have still to reach the ordered chaos of Sanders’s cluttered upstairs office.

Yet much as his “mission control” could do with a makeover, the manager of Durham Women has already presided over a dramatically impressive on-pitch transformation to more than rival anything the architects can dream up.

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Only four points behind the Championship leaders, Tottenham, and only two short of Casey Stoney’s much-vaunted Manchester United, Durham are aiming to secure one of two automatic promotion places to the Women’s Super League. Not bad for a side created only five years ago and which Sanders helped build from scratch.

“Yeah, you feel a sense of pride,” he says, sitting amid a jumble of balls, laptops, studs and a shirt-printing machine in that office a long goalkick away from the centre of one of England’s finest cathedral cities. “The ambition at the start of the season was promotion. We’ve got a really talented team. Why not?”

Belief was bolstered by last month’s 3-1 home win against Manchester United. Goals from Durham’s highly rated Beth Hepple and Zoe Ness sealed a first league defeat for Stoney’s high-budget side.

“Everyone expects Manchester United to finish top and maybe they will,” says Sanders, whose team were formed following a merger of South Durham & Cestria Girls, the club he founded in 2006, and Durham University. “But where we are isn’t really a surprise – although it’s still nice!”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The highly regarded Durham midfielder Beth Hepple. Photograph: George Ledger

Unusually, the 46-year-old is an “accidental manager” who originally formed a team simply because his then five-year-old daughter, Brooke, enjoyed the game. “She doesn’t play any more, she’s a rower now,” says Sanders. “Football was about fun for her but, when I got interested, I started taking it a bit more seriously.”

If Sanders is very different from most counterparts – where some current peers spent years earnestly analysing Marcelo Bielsa’s 3-3-1-3 system he merely regarded watching Newcastle United as relaxation from the stresses of running his own business – so, too, are Durham.

Would it be tough if we won promotion? Of course; we haven’t got the same money as Manchester City and Chelsea but we’d still be competitive

“Our model’s completely different,” he says, explaining that, unusually, the team are not attached to a men’s club. “But it works. We’re incredibly well supported by Team Durham [the university’s multi-sports performance programme]; we’ve got access to every facility we could want.”

Potential new players have the attraction of meshing academic and footballing excellence. “We’ve got a fantastic scholarship scheme, which combines playing with studying part-time for a Durham master’s degree,” says Sanders. “Sometimes there’s a bit of a misconception that we’re the poor relation but we’ve got a lot going for us.

“Would it be tough if we won promotion? Of course; we haven’t got the same money as Manchester City and Chelsea but we’d still be competitive. We’re making preparations so that, if it happens, we’d be able to present the FA with a good WSL business plan. We’re in control of our own destiny.”

That contrasts sharply with the fate of their Wearside neighbours Sunderland, who found themselves demoted two divisions from the WSL when the men’s club withdrew funding last year. “I’m as disappointed as anybody,” says Sanders. “There’s definitely room for another top-level women’s team in the north-east.”

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For the moment, though, Sheffield United are his closest geographical rivals. Considering they sit 125 miles south by road, splendid isolation does not come cheap. “I’d imagine we’ve got the Championship’s biggest hotel and mileage bill – by a long way,” says Sanders. “But hotel stays bond the players, and they’re really well looked after.”

Thanks to much astute financial management on the part of Dawn Hepple, the long-serving club secretary, squad benefits extend well beyond overnight accommodation before away games. The cost of medical insurance is a vexed issue in the women’s game with even some WSL sides finding it unaffordable but Durham offer injured players fast-track access to medical specialists, most notably the leading sports surgeon Louw van Niekerk.

“We run a tight ship but we offer players what is almost a private medical service; nobody, right down to the junior teams, is abandoned if they’re injured,” says Sanders.

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He takes inspiration from Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football. “Baroness Campbell’s fantastic,” he says. “She’s got such passion, such drive. I remember the first time I sat in a room with her; I came out thinking: ‘Yeah, we can do this.’ She’s set new standards. There’s some excellent people at the FA; they don’t always get the credit they deserve for the strides women’s football’s made in recent years.”

Burgeoning interest led to a record 912 crowd turning up at New Ferens Park to watch Durham beat Manchester United last month. “We probably average about 500,” says Sanders. “When you’ve come from nothing and you’re not attached to a men’s club with a core fanbase that’s something to be proud of.”