Female football gets timely charity boost

Interest in women’s football in Mirfield has reached fever pitch as a new grant will allow the Battyeford Belles to create a new football squad.

The team has been given a helping hand after a £3,000 grant from the Football Foundation was handed over to the club.
The grant will allow the Belles to create an open-age Ladies teams so that the girls currently playing in their junior section have a team to progress to.

Chris Hoyle, head of female football at Battyeford, said: “It’s fantastic to get the support from the FA Grow the Game scheme this investment gives us a real opportunity to offer sporting activities to women in the area. A town the size of Mirfield deserves its own Women’s Football Team.”

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The scheme is designed to increase participation in our national game by helping clubs to meet the costs of starting new teams.

The Football Foundation claims the Grow the Game initiative will increase participation in a way that is sustainable.

Its grants create an infrastructure of teams and newly-trained coaches in which new people can start playing the sport, rather than simply providing temporary activity sessions, which are then vulnerable to drops in participation once the programme ends.

This year the foundation is placing a particular emphasis placed on increasing the number of teams and players from the under-15 age bracket to address the decline in participation that occurs as young people leave school and college. The other key focus is on growing the numbers of girls’, women’s and disability teams.

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Paul Thorogood, chief executive of the Football Foundation, said: “Grow the Game has become one of the foundation’s most popular schemes.

“This additional funding provided by the Premier League and The FA is excellent news for grassroots clubs seeking to start new teams and get their volunteer coaches qualified with FA coaching badges.”