This season the Guernsey FA have introduced some new initiatives for girls football. An integral part of delivering these new initiatives has been the appointment of Joelle Pengelley as Football Development Officer for Women’s and Girls. These new opportunities have seen a huge increase in the number of girls participating in football and the Guernsey FA will look to continue this growth of numbers throughout the rest of the season.

The first brand new initiative is the Girls Player Development [PDC] centre, a free football club for girls aged 5-11. The PDC has seen over 40 girls register for these fun sessions on a Monday evening at St Sampson’s High School from 5pm – 6pm. Girls just have to attend wearing trainers for the sessions which take place on the artificial pitch. The focus on these sessions is for the girls to have fun and enjoy football with their friends and also the club provides a great social opportunity for them to mix with girls from other schools and make new friends. On top of this, the sessions are delivered by highly qualified age appropriate coaches, Joelle Pengelley and Angus Mackay. As a result, the sessions also have a focus on technical development in all the areas required for football (dribbling, passing, shooting, first touch, tackling, defending, intercepting, protecting the ball, working as a team, goalkeeping, etc.).

After school clubs for year 1 & 2 girls have also been introduced this season for the first time with Vale, Castel and La Houguette benefiting for this first half term. These three schools combined have seen well over 50 girls taking part in the after schools clubs delivered by Joelle Pengelley.

Festivals are another new opportunity that the GFA will be providing again for girls aged 5-11 years old. The first festival of this season took place at Northfield on Saturday the 11^th of October and saw well over 40 girls in attendance who had the opportunity to experience a coaching session with FA Skills coaches who were visiting Guernsey for the weekend. The FA Skills coaches are experts in coaching 5-11 year old children and as such are employed full time by the FA to work with this age group in England and the Channel Islands.

For further information on Women’s and Girls football please contact Joelle Pengelley, Football Development Officer (Women & Girls), Joelle.pengelley@guernseyfa.com