We caught up with Dave Hotchkiss the club’s Head of Girls and Women’s Football to discuss the next step for the club in expanding the women’s game.
Exciting times for the club and in particular our womens and girls football, tell us how big a step this is for Pontefract Collieries?
It’s a huge step forward for us as a club, to build on what we have done in the last 18 months with our open age ‘Cougars’ I really believe this new team going into tier six will quickly become a beacon of success for womens football in the area. That will be backed up with two teams in the Womens Beginner Leagues so a real football for all feel about what we are doing to get females to take up the game at an ability level they can enjoy.
It also gives our junior girls something to aspire to and I hope by the time our oldest girls reach open age this team will be competing at a really good standard, which we will need given some of the talented girls we are developing already.
I think the openness of the club leadership to embrace what was originally proposed for womens football here and what we can achieve has been great, to support it how they have has been nothing short of superb. I’d like to extend my thanks to the Chairman, Vice Chairman and the committee who have got behind developing our female pathway over the last three seasons.
Tell us about the aspirations for this team both in the short term and the long term?
The first thing was to find an experienced management team, and as fate would have it Jordan and Russ became available at just the right moment, and a mutual friend put us in touch. Since our first meeting and in subsequent discussions it’s been really something to speak with two top coaches in the female grassroots game with the experience and contacts to drive this forward, whilst sharing our club values.
In the short term it’s about creating a squad of players that can compete week in and out, we want to go into next season to make a real statement about where we are heading.
The long term goal is to take a team up through the tiers and emulate the successes of our men’s team, we have some really strong ambitions internally for how far we can take the female team and a target in mind that we will share when the time is right.
We know the growth of the women’s game has risen since England Women won the Euros, how pleased are you at rate of progression here at Pontefract?
It’s been pretty incredible really. Since I introduced a girls team three seasons ago we’ve gone from that one junior team to going into our fourth season in September with at least six junior female teams and three female open age teams.
I think that would be good going on anyone’s terms, so to achieve that with two years of disruption through the pandemic and of course our growth being solely dependent on our volunteers, it really is phenomenal. I have to say I am very proud of what we’ve done, our volunteers are the lifeblood of the club and champions of the local community, we simply couldn’t do what we are doing without them.
We don’t want to stop there though, the ambition has to be that we have girls teams at every age group, and a pathway for our girls to reach an elite level of football through our pathway, and every level under that for those that just want to play. The door is open to anyone who wants to help us get there.
Finally for girls and ladies out there what would your message be to those thinking of getting involved, whether that’s playing or coaching?
We are always looking to grow our player numbers, bring on new coach’s and start new teams. It’s an unique time for female football with the achievements of the Lionesses last summer and our club is really flying the flag to bring a piece of that success to our town.
So to put it simply; ‘get in touch and get involved!’