Frickley Women’s Football

Increase understanding of opportunities / barriers for target audience to play football, through community engagement. They were also aiming to: 

• increase activity levels in women aged 16+ from target audience through football or other activities.
• improve physical and mental wellbeing.

Started two new parent and toddler groups/sessions to enable the project to start conversations with parents/mums to find out what activities they would be interest in and the challenges/barriers they face.

Those initial conversations and the interest in football led to a meeting to discuss local interest, what the session would look like, when, where and any challenges those participants would face. From this meeting they created a weekly football session designed and tailored to meet the needs of the parents/mums that attended.

Nicola, who started as an attendee at P&T session, is now running the weekly women’s football session and has now formed Frickley Ath FC Women’s team. The team has now progressed from the County FA 5 aside rec league to 7 then 9 aside and is now joining an 11 aside league next season.

Most weeks there are now over 20 women attend the session and in May 2024 they looked to start another session alongside the current one to support new participants into the game and continue the recreation offer for anyone who doesn’t want to join the team and/or play weekly fixtures. 

Other ripples:

• Sue had no friends and lacked confidence. Has now lost two stone, social life much better, more confident, doing her coaching badges, looking to volunteer with future soccer stars with girls aged 3-6 and 7-11. Away from football, she is now doing a Step-Up course. 
• Alison has gone from Active Through Football (ATF) football session to a volunteer at Frickley Ath games, and club shop.
• Attendee at P&T whose daughter who was bullied and left football, is now playing at under 10s at a local club. By giving her mum the opportunity to talk about past problems and fears, allowed them to arrange for her to go to training sessions.
• The volunteer at parent and toddler, Lyndsey, didn’t like football but now assists her husband with a local side as he's gone to manage. 
• Referrals in and out of sessions into to local services like turning point and Live Well Wakefield. 
• Paid local work force now leading the parent and toddler sessions, Back 2 Netball and women’s football.

Participants are now paying a weekly subscription to take part and the ATF project is also offering support and guidance to Frickley Athletic FC women’s team to ensure they have a sound club structure to enable them to apply for different pots of funding. ATF is also offering support to anyone who is interested in completing their coaching qualification to enable them to lead on the sessions going forward. 

Find different ways/opportunities to engage with the local community that might be away from more traditional methods, parent and toddler or entry level sessions for children where you can speak to parents on the sideline, etc. 

Where possible let the community lead or shape the session, to ensure that they feel like it’s their session. Having that first initial meeting to discuss about what the session would look like, when, where and any challenges those participants would face, really help drive the session forward and start in a fantastic place. 

• Watch the related video