The boom in women’s football runs the risk of going into reverse because of a shortage of coaches, the Football Association has admitted.
Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s director of women’s football, addressed the “really challenging” situation at the launch of an app designed to make it easier for people to volunteer in the grassroots game.
“As the women’s game has exploded, which it has, and we’ve seen more and more girls coming into the game, our big challenge is that we haven’t got enough people to take care of them,” Campbell said.
“We’re finding it really challenging [to recruit coaches], certainly on the women’s side. [Partly] because we hadn’t expected the amount of influx we’ve had. The World Cup generated a vast number of girls and women coming back into the sport.”
Since 2017 Campbell has overseen the implementation of a national strategy to double the number of women and girls playing football. A target of creating 1,000 “wildcat hubs” by 2020 has been exceeded by as much as 50% but there are not the coaches to complement the new structures.
“Participation can grow but if people have a horrible experience it can drop away again pretty quickly,” Campbell said. “If you look at a number of the initiatives we’ve seen in sport, not necessarily those driven by the FA, you see a rise in participation and then a drop again. That’s because we haven’t looked after the people who look after the new participants.”
Campbell is hoping the app the FA is calling Playmaker will help to turn the tide. Launched in association with BT as part of wide-ranging tie-up between the telecom company and all four home nation football associations, Playmaker is designed to facilitate volunteering by allowing people not only to register an interest but also complete short coaching courses.
The FA and BT have set a target for Playmaker to register 100,000 volunteers by 2024. Half of the total is earmarked for the women’s game, although not all will be coaches, with support and administrative volunteers also included in the target number.
Further plans outlined as part of the “4-3-3” strategy include turning grassroots football clubs into “hubs” for spreading digital skills, introducing more women to sports broadcasting and developing a new version of football for disabled players.
The fee paid by BT for its long-term tie up with football’s national bodies has not been disclosed.