Fair access to elite girls' football - end postcode lottery changes

For our 11 and 12 year old girls at Middlesex Centre of Excellence - football is their passion. They train for four hours a week with matches every Saturday against other Centres of Excellence.

Several have been identified as having England potential and expected their talent to be nurtured and developed in coming years. But that is not to be the case.

The FA is abolishing Centre of Excellence for girls in the coming weeks. Most county FAs are not applying and instead contracts for new Regional Talent Centres for girls will be opened up to market forces.

The result is an uneven geographical distribution of centres – super-serving some areas and making elite girl’s football inaccessible to others.

There will be no Regional Talent Centres for girls in the whole of Middlesex. There is only one proposed in Surrey - Chelsea -where last year 500 girls applied for 2 places at U13 level.

The current contracts that will be issued will stand for three years. By that time our girls will be 15/16 and this will be too late for them.

The FA needs to take time to guide clubs which want to provide elite training for girls (we know many clubs want to run these).

In 2005 a House of Commons Culture, media and sports committee concluded:

“We are extremely concerned that the disparity in funding for boys’ and for girls’ Centres of Excellence existed for eight years. All funding bodies for sport – not just for football - should ensure that there is equitable access to funding streams for both genders.”

We understand that in 2016 there are 68 boy’s academics but only 35 RTCs for girls!

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