FOOTBALL: Rugby Borough's Women and Girls reflect on club's first year

Five new teams will play next season whenever football starts again
An all female committee run Rugby Borough Women & Girls Football ClubAn all female committee run Rugby Borough Women & Girls Football Club
An all female committee run Rugby Borough Women & Girls Football Club

With no more play for the next few months, Rugby Borough’s Women and Girls have been reflecting on the club’s first year. Here’s their story...

Rugby Borough Women and Girls FC formed in the Summer of 2019 when the chairman and secretary of the girls and women’s club at Kilsby Lane decided they wanted to move out.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Not everyone wanted to move and after consulting teams and parents to find the best option for the girls, five teams decided to stay at Kilsby Lane. Rugby Borough Women and Girls FC was formed and the teams were formally registered with the governing body, Birmingham FA.

The club are hoping it won't be too long before scenes like this can return to Kilsby Lane after the coronavirus crisisThe club are hoping it won't be too long before scenes like this can return to Kilsby Lane after the coronavirus crisis
The club are hoping it won't be too long before scenes like this can return to Kilsby Lane after the coronavirus crisis

The first job was to elect a new committee. We were very lucky to have some exceptionally talented mums of players who engaged and stepped forward to help, who better to run the girls section we thought, than these super-mums.

It was refreshing to have a female club run by females and breaking down all of the stereotypes in football in the process!

We duly elected an all female leadership committee, quickly established our constitution and registered for the leagues.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

We were massively helped by our sponsors - Amber Utilities, who provided all of the girls and women a free training kit at sign on, McDonald’s who provide our match day kits and Stanair who continued to sponsor our under 14’s team.

..
.

The committee engaged with the borough council, sharing our vision and five-year development plan for the club to grow which set out our strategy to develop female football in Rugby.

Through this we were delighted to obtain a grant to support our new teams with equipment and funds to train and qualify our volunteer coaches with first aid, welfare and safeguarding certifications.

We were also blessed to receive funding through the local Heart of England Co-operative who invested in helping us train referees and get some footballs, cones, ladders and hurdles for our very youngest to start their footballing journeys. We received a grant through Persimmon Homes too, with their Community Champions award, this enabled us to purchase further training aids.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

We were delighted to support several of our young leaders with their Duke of Edinburgh awards as they helped our coaches design training sessions and deliver these to the younger age group teams.

..
.

The club was recognised by the FA through its quality of coaching provision as a ‘Wildcats Centre’, running sessions for girls age 5-11 who are new to football and are at the beginning of their footballing journey. These sessions are all about fun, fitness and skills development, growing their confidence until they are able to join one of our teams.

Sadly, this year hasn’t ended as we would have liked due to the COVID-19 outbreak with all grassroots football curtailed and the season over.

Our emergence as a women and girls club this year has been hugely successful, all of our competitive teams were strongly placed in the highest leagues in the Leicester City & County Girls Leagues and all of the girls at the club have been a huge credit to themselves, showing great sportsmanship and the club is very proud of all of our playing members, teams and volunteers.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Planning has already started for a successful 2020/21 season and we are adding five new teams this summer, with many of our parents stepping forward for volunteering roles within the club.

The Committee would like to to say a huge thank you to our army of supporters, volunteers, sponsors and most of all, the players who have made the club a fabulous place.

Girls or women who would like to try football can contact [email protected]

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper when you do your weekly shop.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you

Related topics: