{"id":10313,"date":"2015-09-21T12:58:11","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T12:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/09\/21\/we-can-play\/"},"modified":"2015-09-21T12:58:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T12:58:11","slug":"we-can-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2015\/09\/21\/we-can-play\/","title":{"rendered":"We Can Play"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Shattering Pre-Conceptions About Women and Girl\u2019s Football<\/h3>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"\/

\nLast weekend as I gazed across the Canadian football pitches, home to South West United in Edmonton, and saw a number of girls making their way towards the coaches eager and ready to begin their session, I took a breath and smiled.<\/p>\n


\nThese girls were buzzing with excitement and illustrated much confidence in front of the boys\u2019 teams that were also present over the two days. Despite this sureness in their ability, it soon became apparent to me that the visibility of female coaches working with these players was to be of the upmost importance.<\/p>\n


\nI reflected upon the \u2018We Can Play\u2019 campaign launched by The FA to help shatter pre-conceptions about women and girl\u2019s football. <\/p>\n


\nDespite it being the largest team sport for girls and women in England, just over half of those spoken to in the research felt that football was a game for them and from those that play; four out of five of them do not feel confident in doing so. Here it hit home and I understood the power of acting as a positive role-model, being a female coach working with female players. <\/p>\n


\nDue to peer pressure, gender stereotyping and even derogatory comments on the women\u2019s game research has revealed it is holding back greater participation of women and girls in football. On the contrary to this statistic, my weekend in Canada saw me work with just over 100 girls aged between 10 \u2013 17 years old all of whom participate in competitive football on a weekly basis. In fact the club consists of 370 signed players and run parallel teams for the boys and girls section which certainly poses a question to that \u2018pre-conception\u2019. These girls definitely feel that they belong. <\/p>\n


\nIt was wonderful to observe the positive attitudes of parents and carers of the girls from all age groups in encouraging them to take part \u2013 but most importantly encouraging them to have fun in what they love doing \u2013 playing football.<\/p>\n


\nThis international coaching trip confirmed something I had thought of previously when working with female players in London, the position I hold as an educator, as a coach and as a female working within the game. We have much influence over those that we come into contact with and I feel I have a moral responsibility to help encourage and empower more young girls and women to participate in the national game.<\/p>\n


\nPerceptions must be challenged as women\u2019s football is growing in profile and professionalism. Many of the girls in Canada spoke highly of the Women\u2019s Super League with one player determined to play for Arsenal Ladies. My reply to her was simple, \u201cIf you have a dream, go for it!\u201d <\/p>\n


\nIt was an honour to be amongst passionate motivated girls who displayed great drive for wanting to learn, but more so, wanting to play.

\nWe should take inspiration from this and the ethos that South West United has embedded.<\/div>\n

\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shattering Pre-Conceptions About Women and Girl\u2019s Football \u00a0 \u00a0 Last weekend as I gazed across the Canadian football pitches, home to South West United in Edmonton, and saw a number of girls making their way towards the coaches eager and ready to begin their session, I took a breath and smiled. These girls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}