Crystal Palace Women

Paige Bailey-Gayle left and came back to Sutton, and it was that second spell that mattered: her return in 2023 made her the first player from Crystal Palace Women to go to a World Cup. The club had been building toward that kind of milestone for three decades without much fuss, playing across a string of grounds that read like a lower-league itinerary — the Crystal Palace National Sports Stadium until 2014, then Church Road, then Bromley's Hayes Lane, before settling at the VBS Community Stadium in Sutton for the 2023/24 season.

That move landed in the same season the team won the FA Women's Championship, English football's second tier, and went up to the Women's Support League for the first time.

Rinsola Babajide is the other name worth keeping: she started out at Palace in the 2014–15 season, before Millwall, Liverpool and Roma, and before she was capped by Nigeria. The South London derby against Millwall, along with fixtures against Charlton Athletic, remains the closest thing the club has to a settled rivalry.

The Eagles wear red and blue vertical stripes with white shorts, matching the men's team, and their new home in Sutton holds 7,032.