The former Wimbledon winger is in charge of the team who have defied the odds to be in sight of the Women’s Super League title with four games to go

The plane sits on the Tarmac waiting to transport England’s World Cup squad from Ottawa to Vancouver and a quarter-final against Canada. As befits an official Fifa aircraft, it is spacious and opulent inside, so roomy one player clambers into an overhead luggage locker.

Toni Duggan has boarded slightly earlier than her team-mates and, unseen by the cabin crew, secreted herself. When she emerges, dropping down into her seat in suitably dramatic fashion, it causes quite a stir.

Two months after Canada 2015 and thousands of miles away in north-east England, Carlton Fairweather is suitably impressed. “Fantastic,” says the coach of title-chasing Sunderland Ladies. “She’d have fitted in very well at Wimbledon.”

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Fairweather should know. A gifted winger, he was part of the Crazy Gang in the 1980s playing an integral role in the audacious rise to English football’s top tier. “If, back in the day, I’d told Dennis Wise and the others I was coaching women’s football it wouldn’t have gone down at all well,” he says, smiling. “But times have changed.”

So much so that, although Sunderland Ladies do not fly to FA Women’s Super League fixtures, they often travel in the luxury bus used by Dick Advocaat’s side. “My players are definitely better looked after than we ever were at Wimbledon,” Fairweather says. “Their lunches are planned by a nutritionist; we went to a caff.

“It’s brilliant. We sometimes stay in hotels, good hotels, before games and we’ve got access to all the men’s facilities, the medics, the sports psychologist.”

The benefits of such integration, the result of Sunderland Ladies being based alongside the men’s teams at the Academy of Light training base, can be seen clearly in the WSL table.

Despite being newly promoted from WSL2, a team bolstered by Beth Mead’s seemingly endless supply of goals stand second, a point behind Chelsea and one ahead of third-placed Arsenal. They hope to return from Sunday’s visit to struggling Birmingham having regained top spot, with Chelsea visiting Arsenal on the same day.

As the WSL season draws to its October conclusion, the title is in clear sight: “Anything’s possible,” Fairweather says. “We’ve four cup finals [league games] left, let’s see where they take us.”

The 53-year-old works with nine full-time professionals on a daily basis as well as coaching the rest of his squad – mainly teachers – three evenings a week. The full-timers begin their mornings by working alongside Sunderland’s male under-21 squad doing exactly the same conditioning and warm-up routines.

“The standard of women’s football has really improved,” says Fairweather, whose side attract attendances in excess of 1,000. “When girls turn professional you see massive tactical, technical and physical changes.”

Although they earn less in a year than most of Advocaat’s players collect in a week (professional WSL players generally command between £20,000-£35,000 a year with the 27 centrally contracted to the England squad collecting an extra £26,000) Fairweather predicts rapid wage rises in future years.

“I think, over time, you’ll see top women footballers earning enough to set them up for life,” says a man who had his “eyes opened” as to the female game’s potential while playing in the US.

After spending more than a decade coaching in Sunderland’s youth academy, Fairweather succeeded Mick Mulhern and moved over to the Ladies squad last December. Under Mulhern the club became noted for producing England internationals. Five – Steph Houghton, Jill Scott, Lucy Bronze, Jordan Nobbs and Carly Telford – of the squad who won a bronze medal in Canada were Sunderland graduates.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The important thing with coaching women is honesty,’ Fairweather says. Photograph: Craig Connor/NNP for the Guardian

All have now left, with Houghton, Scott and Bronze playing alongside Duggan at free-spending Manchester City, but their former side have regrouped to the point where even the newcomer Stephanie Roche has struggled to establish herself.

Roche arrived on Wearside from Houston Dash as the runner-up to Real Madrid’s James Rodríguez in the 2014 Puskas award for the best goal of the year but has found competition for places tough. “Stephanie needs time to find her feet,” Fairweather says.

His candour pays dividends. “The important thing with coaching women is honesty, if you’re honest the girls are fantastic,” he says. “They’ve got great attitude, desire, commitment and a willingness to adapt tactically. They’re all so willing to learn, they want to get better. Those things have sometimes got a little bit lost in the men’s game in recent years.”

It rather begs the question as to how many of Advocaat’s struggling squad would have possessed the mental strength required to thrive at Wimbledon. The Crazy Gang’s teetotal “sensible one,” Fairweather often ended up extricating Wise, Fashanu and friends from assorted scrapes but he was far from immune from the squad’s penchant for practical jokes.

“We were in a minibus on a dark country lane late at night going to Bisham Abbey,” he recalls. “The lads decided on a toilet break so we all got out but by the time I’d turned round to go back to the bus, everyone else was racing towards it and its engine had started. I ran so fast I managed to leap on to the back as it took off and, somehow, hauled myself through the door as it gathered speed. It’s one moment in my life I remember particularly well.

“But Wimbledon was unique. Off the pitch we had all the attributes of a Sunday league team, on it, everyone pulled their weight. The big thing about the Crazy Gang was that the collective was always more important than the individual. That’s something we saw with England in Canada and something we’ve got here at Sunderland.”