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Opinion
Drew Spence's record-breaking 217th WSL appearance is the kind of milestone that deserves far more attention than it will get - because longevity in this league has never been harder to achieve.
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Drew Spence has played 217 Women's Super League matches. Let me type that again, because the number deserves a second look: two hundred and seventeen. More than Millie Bright. More than anyone, ever, in the history of the competition. And she did it wearing a captain's armband, in a 4-1 win, with her team playing some of the best football Tottenham have produced this season.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a perfect afternoon. So why does it feel like a story that will be forgotten by Wednesday?
Appearance milestones are the most undervalued achievements in professional sport. They are not flashy. They do not generate highlight reels. Nobody is posting a clip of Drew Spence turning up to training on a wet Tuesday in January 2019 and deciding, again, to do the hard work that keeps a body available for selection year after year after year.
But that is precisely what makes this record extraordinary. The WSL has existed since 2011. It has been through rebrands, restructures, a pandemic, multiple broadcast deals and an era-defining explosion in investment. Spence has been there through all of it - first at Chelsea, where she spent over a decade, and now at Spurs, where she has reinvented herself as a leader in a squad with serious ambitions.
Two hundred and seventeen appearances means surviving every culling, every squad overhaul, every new manager who arrives with their own ideas about who fits and who does not. It means staying fit when contemporaries retire. It means being good enough, week after week, to justify selection against players a decade younger.
You could argue that appearance records are partly a product of circumstance. Spence has been fortunate with injuries. She joined the WSL early enough to accumulate games when squads were smaller and competition for places was thinner. The league she debuted in is not the league she plays in now.
All true - and all irrelevant. The WSL is deeper, faster and more physically demanding than it has ever been. Spence is not surviving on nostalgia. She is competing. Tottenham's 4-1 demolition of Birmingham was not a testimonial - it was a statement from a squad that includes Julie Blakstad, Victoria Pelova and Cathinka Tandberg, all of whom are in or approaching their prime. Spence started, captained, and belonged.
I wrote last month about the WSL's coaching revolution - eight of fourteen clubs now led by women. That shift did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because players like Spence built the league's credibility over years when nobody was watching, when crowds were counted in hundreds and media coverage was an afterthought.
The infrastructure that allows London City Lionesses to land a record Nike deal and Arsenal to fill the Emirates exists because players showed up when showing up was not glamorous. Spence is the living embodiment of that commitment.
And yet - and this is the bit that nags at me - the record will probably generate a fraction of the attention given to a single Ballon d'Or ceremony or a viral Instagram stat. Alexia Putellas's award drove 34 million hits to London City's page. Spence's 217th cap will be lucky to trend for an afternoon.
Spence described herself as "proud" afterwards. Understated, characteristically. But pride is the right word, because what she has built cannot be reduced to a number on a teamsheet. It is a career that spans the entire modern history of English women's club football.
Two hundred and seventeen. Nobody has done it before. And given how quickly the WSL is evolving - how much more competitive, how much more demanding it becomes each season - nobody may do it again for a very long time.
That is not a footnote. That is a legacy. Even if it does not get the fanfare it deserves.
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Copyright 2026 VIASPORT
Eva Hernández, Editor-in-Chief
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