The 2022 community season has come to a close and we're thrilled to see female football continue to go from strength to strength. With the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 Australia and New ZealandTM on the horizon, community Clubs around the state have grown their programs to allow more women and girls than ever to play our great game.
There has been a groundswell of support for female football in Victoria and throughout 2022, a vast amount of community Clubs have invested heavily to grow their women and girls programs.
Manningham United Blues Secretary Mike Cockburn said the Club was one of many who made a conscious effort to increase investment in their female programs following the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“We drew a bit of line in the sand with culture and what we were as a club, we started celebrating female football. We sat down with our girls and started taking their feedback on things to make them feel more at home," he explained.
Manningham jumped from five girls' teams to eight this season with their U16 Girls winning the league and going through the season undefeated.
“We put care packages in the bathrooms, we went through and redesigned our away kits as white shorts isn’t ideal for girls.
“We asked all the girls what they wanted, and they basically redesigned their new kit. They decided black, and purple were the colours that they wanted and everything else kind of stayed the same.
“The other thing that we did was we actively encouraged our senior girls to coach and referee. Some of our U16s love that and two of our senior girl's coach Miniroos. It then encourages the young girls to come down and watch their heroes play.”
Cockburn said the club received a positive response to their new approach to allocating teams.
“First we did by age group, secondly we did by friendship group, and then the third thing we did it by was by skill level,” he said.
“We knew we were going to take a hit on game day, but we would keep friends together and in the long run the matches results would come.
“In our opinion, girls play better when they are friends instead of skill level because they play for each other.
“We also overfilled our squads; it allowed the girls to not feel guilty for taking a weekend off.
“We had enough numbers to absorb girls who just wanted to live their life.
“The thing we have learned over the years is that if you lose a girl one year, you basically never get them back.”
The Blues also made a conscious effort to ensure everything that was done for the senior men would be the same for the senior women.
“Our men have a dinner as part of their weekly routine so now the women do too,” Cockburn said.
“The men trained on an all-synthetic pitch, so now the girls do too, when I took over the girls were training on a cricket oval with no goals.
“We wanted to show we really care about the women in our club.”
Manningham jumped from five girls' teams to eight this season with their U16 Girls winning the league and going through the season undefeated.
“We want to foster a good club culture and have people stay around and the other teams,” he said.
“We put so much love and effort into these girls, I am expecting 100 percent retention on my girls for next season.”
The Northern Falcons also enjoyed a steady rise in female participation with the club entering nine female teams in 2022 compared to four in 2021.
Falcons’ president Frank Pizzo said the club was “really excited” with the growth in the women’s game and envisioned entering 12 teams next season.
“We made a huge push to attract more females to the club and not just from a playing perspective,” he said.
“We brought in a number of women onto our committee and most of our women’s teams are coached by women.
“As a result of attracting more women to the club off the pitch, we saw a follow-on effect and we grew from three teams to nine teams, we even ended up knocking people back.”
Pizzo said the club put a lot of effort into creating an inclusive culture to help with the retention of their players.
“We created an environment where everyone was comfortable and I think that showed in the increase in numbers,” he said.
“If you get a group of friends together it will help them want to come back.
“We understand the importance of having women in our club, they provide different points of view and it just enriches our culture.”
Football Victoria has set out to reach 50:50 gender equity by 2027 and is thrilled by the effort of Clubs throughout the state who are investing in growing our game.