National women’s football coach, Karen Warner, has called on the country’s football clubs to do more for the development of women’s football in the country.
Warner, who is also a coach within the schools’ football programme, said boys are often better prepared than girls because of their affiliation to various clubs across the island.
“If the clubs can actually assist by doing something, then at least when they get to school level it wouldn’t be so hard for the coaches. When you look at the males and the females, sometimes the males don’t have any work to do, all they have to do is set plays and those sort of things but we, the female coaches, have to go from the basic and that would take a lot of time for us to go forward,” she said.
The coach, who also plays at the senior national level, believes that coaches, especially those charged with preparing female players, are not given enough credit.
“A lot of people think it’s easy but it’s not an easy job, because school league basically starts in September and by the time we get the girls they might be a bunch of fresh girls and they maybe don’t know anything; and when I say anything I mean anything. They don’t know how to kick a ball, don’t know how to throw a ball and so when we have to work from the basics and looking at the timeframe that we have to compete, it is kind of hard for us,” Warner said.
Late last year, coaches working within the schools’ football programme came under the microscope with reports that a number of them had not been turning out for scheduled training sessions at their assigned schools. The issues were however reported as handled following a meeting with all football coaches within the ministry and Minister of Sports, Daryll Matthew.