Hands up, who enjoyed the 2019 Women’s World Cup? England’s run to the semi-finals drew record viewing figures, unparalleled interest in the sport and has left many young girls up and down the country dreaming of becoming the next Steph Houghton, Lucy Bronze or Ellen White.
If you’ve got a wannabe Lioness on your hands, you might be wondering how you can capitalise on their interest and help to nurture their newfound love of football. Luckily, there are plenty of girls’ football academies and clubs in the Twickenham area to help you.
So what classes are available for Girls in Twickenham?
We Make Footballers
We Make Footballers are the leading football coaching academy in London with links to multiple schools across the capital including several in West London. The Twickenham academy runs girls-only sessions for seven to thirteen-year-olds every Wednesday night between 6pm and 7pm at their base at Orleans Park School.
Sessions cater to players of all levels as our coaches focus on helping each individual player develop. During the winter months sessions take place in the indoors sports hall and move outside onto the 3G astro-turf during the summer.
Each session is led by fully qualified FA Coaches with the aim of providing football in a fun and safe environment for every girl regardless of their abilities. For beginners, they’ll learn the basics of the game and grow in confidence as they do so while those with a little more experience will love developing their skills to become all round better players. The all-female coaching team create fun sessions with a new theme each week.
The WMF girls football programme has helped 10 players enter grassroots teams and 4 players attend trials at professional clubs.
We Make Footballers even have links with professional clubs, which means that coaches can recommend girls who are good enough to go for trials. With the Women’s Super League now fully professional, becoming a footballer is suddenly a realistic career aspiration for girls so there has never been a better time to help start them on their journey.
Richmond Park FC
Richmond Park FC are one of the biggest girls’ football clubs in the Twickenham area. Founded in 2014, they now run 16 teams ranging from Under 5s right the way through to an adult side.
They are always on the lookout for new players across all age groups, whether you have a girl who wants to play recreationally within the Wildcats or Rookies programmes or one who wants to try and help the club add to their impressive haul of trophies and honours.
Training sessions are held on weekday evenings on all weather pitches in Kingston and are run by fully qualified FA coaches – and they even have summer football schools for girls aged between 8 and 15 which take place every Monday and Wednesday before the season starts.
Brentford Community Sports Trust
Of the Twickenham area’s professional clubs, it’s Brentford who lead the way in terms of programmes for women via their Community Sports Trust.
The Bees have forged links with schools, hosted football festivals on the Griffin Park pitch, and on International Women’s Day Brentford captain Romaine Sawyers and winger Chiedozie Ogbene took a coaching session for girls in the local area.
The Trust has the support of Sky Sports News presenter Natalie Sawyer – a Brentford fan – and has reached more than 1,000 girls in the West London area so far.
We hope that you have found this article helpful in getting your daughter or a young female player into football. As the sport grows, it is important that opportunities are created on an ongoing basis for girls in football and Twickenham has a very strong footballing scene for girls and women. See you at training!
