Football Stars Inspire Young Girls Before England WCQ
13On Saturday 5th April, Brighton's American Express Community Stadium will welcome the women's England team as they take on Montenegro in their next World Cup Qualifier ahead of Canada 2015.
Brighton and Hove Albion are taking full advantage of hosting the clash by encouraging participation in Albion in the Community's girls' football development centre. The sessions run every Tuesday at Blatchington Mill School in Hove, and as added inspiration they invited England defender Hannah Blundell and Albion centre back Cally Beaumont to motivate the girls.
The gulf between the men's and women's game is widely known, but Beaumont thinks the infrastructure around girls' football is changing for the better. She said: "It's hard, I can't say it's not, opportunities weren't there when I was younger, but now there are so many more development squads and it's a great atmosphere to be in."
In a previous life, before I became Sports Editor for Latest TV, I worked as a Teaching Assistant at Carlton Hill Primary School in Brighton. At the start of 2013, 'girls only' football on Fridays was introduced on the school's 5-a-side football pitch.
I witnessed the girls becoming more passionate about the game and watched as they became increasingly skilful week by week. So, I headed to Albion in the Community's annual girls' football tournament thinking 'I hope the other teams are ready for us!'
Unfortunately, my overconfidence was short lived; we came up against girls who had the kind of training you would expect from quality development centres, and we lost every game.
This might not sound like good news, but imagine my delight when I arrived at Blatchington Mill to see that two members of the Carlton Hill team had joined the development centre.
What we had done at Carlton Hill was merely the first step, which was to spark a desire to play the game. The next step happens at places like Albion's development centre, where enthusiasm for a sport is added to professional, technical coaching
Albion in the Community is also running a 'taster session' at St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School on the 27th March in the lead up to the England fixture in April.
It seems AITC have the right idea, they are making the transition from 'taster sessions' to technical coaching as fluid as possible.
Providing the girls with strong role models they can identify with is essential. England defender Hannah Blundell was candid in discussing the sacrifices she's made to get where she is. She told Latest Sport: "It's taken pretty much all my life, we train every day, sometimes double sessions.
I don't really have much of a social life, with working as well, but it's what I wanted to do, so I'm happy to do it."
As part of the session, the girls were able to ask Hannah and Cally about their journey and it was enlightening to hear the impact their presence had on the class, like 11 year old Isla Murton who told us: "I want to play for England, I just want to play football professionally."
The ideal legacy of England's game with Montenegro is to have more girls playing the game and to increase the number of sessions. Kim Stenning is part of the coaching set up at AITC and says the desire is there: "We deliver to 21 schools a week, just for girls. So really we want to get the girls going!"