The first girls session we ever ran had four players in it. We had advertised it for a month.
We kept it running for a term with four, then six, then eleven. Three things changed it, and none of them was advertising.
The first was a woman coach. Attendance roughly doubled in the month after Shifaana took the session, and every parent who spoke to us about it said the same thing.
The second was the time and the place. Five in the afternoon rather than four, on a screened part of the ground, with parents welcome to stay. Several families told us plainly that this was the condition.
The third was fixtures. A squad that only trains is a club with no reason to turn up in week nine. We arranged games against two other academies who were in the same position we were, which took a year of asking.
Sixty one girls train with us now across football and athletics. The four who came to the first session are all still here, and two of them help with the foundation group on Saturdays.
