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Creating a 'Wembley for women' is one of Nottingham Forest's key aims for the new stadium they are planning if England is chosen to stage the 2018 World Cup and Nottingham is selected as one of the 12 host cities.

The 45,000 capacity stadium would be built in Gamston, a mile from Forest's current City Ground and where the club have already proved successful in staging FA Women's Cup finals. Promotional work by Forest and the city council in 2007 helped to almost double the previous record attendance for the final, and a year later they broke the record again with a crowd of 24,582.

Forest's chief executive Mark Arthur said: "We would want the new stadium to have a lasting legacy, and a strong part of that would be the hosting of major fixtures in the women's game. Wembley is probably too big for women's football so we would aim to set ourselves up as the Wembley for women. We would offer to host all of England's home games and the FA Cup final every year. If given that mandate, I believe our new stadium could become as important to the women's game as Wembley is to the men's."

Fixture constraints meant that Forest were unable to hold last season's FA Cup final at the City Ground, but they have requested do so in the current campaign while also hoping that their women's team will become part of the Super League that the FA are aiming to start in 2011. Forest today missed the chance to go to the top of the Premier League, a 3-1 defeat by Watford sending the Hornets joint top with Millwall Lionesses, who were held to a goalless draw by Birmingham. In the day's only other game, Leeds won 2-0 against Doncaster.

(Source: Guardian.co.uk)