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A local football club has grown from 12 to 80 girls across six age groups in just four seasons amid a "dramatic" increase in interest in the female game.
Coach and parent Russell Wynn sat down with Express to explain how it all started and why he thinks Jersey Wanderers has become the island's "fastest growing" girl's football club.
It all started with the Jersey College Prep Girls football team, who were playing well in school matches against mixed (mainly boys) primary school teams.
When they moved up to JCG [secondary school], there was no access to regular football matches.
Pictured: JWFC hosted the annual girl's tournament with 200 players from clubs across Jersey and Guernsey.
So, with the help of Libby Barnett, who heads up the Jersey Wanderers Women’s team and John Leonard, they formed the first JWFC girls team with those JCP girls plus a couple of girls already at Wanderers minis.
The growth in the girl's game has been dramatic. We welcome all-comers to Wanderers Girls and have never turned anyone away.
To cope with the influx, we have been fortunate that the Wanderers Women’s football team players have been very supportive with many of them volunteering to coach the girls.
Add in some enthusiastic parents like myself and it has been possible to manage the club's rapid expansion.
Having great coaching staff has been key. We place an emphasis on fun and enjoying the game so that the girls want to come back the next week for training even if the weather is dreadful!
Also we have always entered a team in the JFA Junior Sunday league for all eligible age groups (under-12 and up).
Although this can be quite tough for the girls who are relatively new to the sport, it really speeds up their development.
The girls really enjoy the matches even though its mostly against boys teams and our focus is on how we play the game rather than what the result is.
Yes, although probably not as much of a surge as I was expecting.
Pictured: JWFC's under-15 girl's team.
We have added around 15 or so new girls to the club each season and there were a few more that year, but it wasn’t huge.
The Lionesses' victory did raise the enthusiasm of all our girls that season.
We are given some flexibility when entering teams into the Jersey FA Junior league so that we can match the girls ability and experience against appropriate opposition.
We generally opt to play the girls against year younger boys teams, so our U14 team would be playing against an U13 boys team for example.
As girls tend to develop earlier than boys, this match of age groups are generally more suitable to compete against, however many of our girls do also play with and against boys of their own age within mixed teams.
As the girls get older and the boys physically develop, the physical advantage gap often widens with strength and pace being key physical attributes which are tougher to match.
Next season our U16 girls – the ones who have been with us from the start – will no doubt find it physically challenging but at the same time fantastic experience as they prepare to enter open-age football in the Senior Women’s league as they turn 16.
We have some very talented girls.
Any local sports club will tell you that finding volunteer coaches who can continually commit the time and effort is always difficult.
Pictured: The under-13 squad.
We have been fortunate to have great support from Wanderers Women’s team – five of our twelve coaches are players.
We have also been lucky to have enough enthusiastic parent coaches come along at the right time.
It to be larger.
Two seasons ago the three girls clubs on the island along with the JFA launched the first all girls football Saturday league for the U14 age group. Last season an u12 group was added.
Next season, a fourth club will join the all-girls league and the plan is to further expand to have three age groups.
In a few years time, it would be great to have half a dozen girls teams competing in an all-girls league for all the age groups.
I expect it will be.
Once the girls are 16 they can play senior football, so in a few years there will be dozens more senior women's footballers in Jersey which can only benefit the women's game.
The growth of the female game has brought increased sponsorship and we are very grateful to HAWK Group who support both our Women's and Girl's teams.
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