Last night Danielle and I had the unusual experience of being wooed by a soccer club. Unusual because we aren’t premiers, reserves or even div 2 players. We are div 4!
The team has been a little disgruntled over the past few years with the facilities provided by the current club. When you are sharing one field with three other teams you start to learn the skills more suitable for a futsal game than a mega soccer pitch. By the time the girls play on the weekend they are knackered 20 mins in with another 70 mins to go. Needless to say they didn’t even get in to the finals this season. A few of the players felt that they weren’t improving and thought that maybe leaving to another club might be a solution.
This has prompted a mass exodus with maybe 12 girls shopping around. Danielle contacted a few clubs and got a good response from two of them and met with one of them last night. The chairman was there to greet us and showed us their facilities. They have at least 4 fields all in great condition due to the underground sprinklers, there is public transport close by and they have a good little clubhouse. He is desperate to have a womens squad as they have a great group of younger female teams who are in the grand finals and he wants to have a path for them to move up to.
He offered us a coach who could give us some basic skills tips in the off season along with some fitness nights. We have the choice of picking what night/day we want to play our matches (i.e Friday night or late sunday afternoon) and can have some input in to what we want the strip to look like. He also said we would be given preference like a premier team because we would be the top women’s side. Danielle and I felt like Wayne Rooney being hunted by Manchester United!
Everything he said sounded brilliant and was very inspiring. I was considering taking next year off again like I did this season, but after hearing him talk I was ready to play for the Matildas! We kind of wished that all the other players were there to hear it because we were ready to sign up there and then! Hopefully the team will want to stay together and will want to come to the club. It isn’t that far from our current club and what is most refreshing is that they really, really, really want us!
The best bit..was the chance to design our own strip!!! The colours are Blue and white. I’ve been checking out a few jerseys for other clubs, and I like the look of Japan’s world cup blue strip. Amy, if you still have the image, do you reckon you could post it here for the girls to have a look at? Pullleeeassse 😉