What's the state of play for women's football?

Saturday 05 November 2016

Jersey are the current Island Games champions but do you think enough is being done here to encourage women to play football?

The Jersey FA have launched an online survey to find out what you think and will also be speaking to local clubs this month to find out what challenges they face running female sides.

The survey which you'll find here is part of their new strategy aimed at giving women and girls more opportunities to take up the sport at all levels.

Jersey FA Business Development Manager Bob Lawrence said: “Women and Girl’s football is on the up in Jersey and we have seen a great deal of interest since the success of our Women’s team in the Island Games.  We want to build on that by providing opportunities at all levels from Grass Roots through to Adult football for any females wanting to play. 

"We already have a number of initiatives in place such as our Player Development Centre and we are working with three clubs to introduce junior girl’s teams.  In addition we have been running very successful taster events for girls and some small sided games tournaments.  Our aim is to bring all of this together so that we have a joined up strategy that will see the number of opportunities for girl’s to play football increase and that in turn will flow through into club’s being able to run junior girl’s teams and ultimately through into growth in the senior game.

“We hope that we will get a good and wide ranging response to the survey.  We are interested in everyone’s views and not just those already involved in the game.  We have our own ideas on how things should shape up but it’s really important that we test these with players, coaches plus league and club officials.  Following the consultation, we will finalise the overall strategy and then feed that back to the football community.”