There are few things make me yell at the TV more or want to bash out a cranky blog than ill-conceived, small-minded, short-term solutions to footballing growing pains. And I say growing pains, because that's what we're going through, as football finds its feet in Australia and develops on its already strong grassroots base.

I'm talking about Adelaide United chairman Greg Griffin's announcement last week that he was tightening the club's belt and that there was no room for the Lady Reds in this new, thinner footballing waist.

His declaration came after I'd barely put fingers to keyboard to say that the embattled Adelaide United W-League team, which is now up to 24 games without a win and which is struggling to find some goals, needed our support.

No one's denying that the Adelaide team isn't currently yielding results, but Griffin's intended action is a Clive Palmer-esque move that looks purely at bank balances and places to cut costs. It doesn't look at the future of women's football—the fastest, I repeat, fastest growing women's sport in Australia.

It's not just about having a W-League team for Adelaide, although that's incredibly important too. It's about nurturing the next generation of female footballing talent as well as bringing in future A- and W-League fans. I said the same things when I talked about the shock loss of the Central Coast Mariners W-League team—they were the canary in the women's footballing cage and Adelaide are, well, a sign that we didn't do enough to revive or address the death of the first canary.

What Griffin seems not to grasp is that supporting the W-League in turn supports the A-League. Fans like me support both and the W-League is potentially a more inviting, less intimidating entry to football fandom for women who don't come from a strong, football-supporting tradition or family. As I recall, the Adelaide United A-League-only club wasn't so flush with funds a couple of years back, with Football Federation Australia having to bail them out. The club needs all the supporters it can get—male and female.

No one's implying that the club shouldn't aim to be financially viable, but there are other areas to cut costs and other solutions that need to be put on the table before the loss of the Lady Reds. The removal of the W-League team might yield immediate savings on paper, but its long-term decimation of the Adelaide fan-base, its female footballing talent as it's lost to other sports or interstate, and the general ill will fans will feel towards the club won't sustain this financial boon.

Head of women's football, Leeanne Grantham said so herself much more eloquently, when ABC TV caught her pitch-side during the Adelaide v Sydney W-League match on Saturday. She remained positive but didn't mince her words, saying that such a decision wasn't the answer and that she hoped that this issue could be reexamined and resolved.

And you know what makes me the saddest in all this? It's that in spite of what the scoreboard says and the off-field guillotine waiting to drop, the Lady Reds are playing well. Watching them take on the reigning W-League champions on Saturday, knowing that they knew that their footballing future is up in the air and that they were staring down the barrel of a 24th match without recording a win, I was impressed with just how composed, poised, and skilful the players were.

They might have lost by four goals, but they were extremely unlucky not to score. Adelaide aren't the league's pushovers; it's just that shots that go in for other teams seem to skew slightly wide of the goal mouth or are—literally, as we saw Sydney goalkeeper Dimi Poulos do—plucked from the goalward-bound air at the last second to deny them the spoils.

Watching Adelaide play, I never saw the team drop their heads and, had I not known the stats, wouldn't have had a reason to believe they couldn't and wouldn't take Sydney should a couple of shots go their way. In fact, while they might not be coming away with points from the games, Adelaide United are improving with every round. And isn't that what the W-League was created for? To develop women's football?

Shame on you, Greg Griffin, for putting short-term cash flow ahead of female football development.