Women's & Girls' Football Update

It’s World Cup year, and with the biggest sporting event ever held in Aotearoa New Zealand kicking off in just a few months, one of the key legacies of the tournament will be in the opportunities it creates for girls and women to be involved in the game – at all levels, in all forms.

Increasing female participation is a focus for New Zealand Football and is a strategic priority for East Coast Bays. Our efforts over the past 3 years has seen the number of female players and teams grow significantly. Introducing ideas such as Fun Friday Football has meant girls can give football a go at non-traditional times, limiting clashes with other sporting codes.

The start of Fun Football Fridays, held in Term 1, was a success as we had approximately 60 girls across mini and youth turning up each week to start the year. It was great to build morale and confidence heading into the season.

Building on to this for Term 2 we now have strong registration numbers (with more joining each week) for Mini Girls on Friday nights, which is creating an enjoyable community feel at Ashley Reserve. We are continuing to build the 9 and 10s Flamingoes numbers as we look to have a larger group, where we can improve and develop players heading into weekend football. We have a wonderful group of U14 youth girl's coaches as well as parents engaging with the groups, which is fantastic to build the number of Girls and Women's coaches in the club. We have also recently been approved to host an NZ Football Fantails Hub to help grow participation for girls’ football, you can find more information here: https://www.nzfootball.co.nz/fantails

Outside of Friday nights, our junior girls are shifting into Team Hubs for Term 2 on Monday nights with around 48 girls for 9/10s and 11/12/13s. It has been great to work with, and see, the coaches engaging with their teams, as well as mixing and mingling with the girls.

We have started to integrate the use of CoachMate for Mini Girls and the Team Hub sessions, which has a great amount of content to suit each group, with sessions preloaded each week and coaches simply downloading the app for access. If you are interested, you can access CoachMate via https://www.coachmate.sport/download-coachmate.

Youth has kicked off following an early start in February, and we have a good group of core girls across 12-16 year old group, socially and competitively. We are looking to build youth numbers as we work towards developing an accredited Talent Development Program (TDP) for girls in u14 and u16.

Numbers have also been good for our Women's senior teams with two teams performing well in their divisions. Both teams have won their first 3 games and sit on top of their leagues, our Women's first team leading the NRF Div 3 league and our Women's Blue Belles leading the NRF Div 4 league.

We would like to thank our strategic partner New World Albany for their continued support in helping us grow girls' football at East Coast Bays. Many of these programmes and initiatives wouldn't be possible without their continued support.

Grace O'Donoghue, Football Development Officer: Women's & Girls' Football