By Tania Phillips
The Women’s World Cup is already bringing more interest to the sport according to a Southern Downs Football Club.
Warwick Wolves officials said they were already seeing a lot of interest at all levels from both men and women as well as young girls hoping to follow in the Matilda’s footsteps.
“I think the Matilda’s have encouraged numbers across the board, our female playing numbers are up but it’s everyone,” Club president Dom Benz said.
“Even our men’s team has experienced a really good year in terms of numbers and commitment from the players.
“We are already seeing people asking about next year, more new children wanting to play next season.”
Referees Coordinator and women’s player Kaitlyn Newley said it’s good news for the club who were unable to field a women’s team this year due to lack of numbers but until then had consistently had a team.
“It was disappointing not to be able to field a side,” she said.
“A played in the Toowoomba League last year, I was living in Toowoomba. Our women’s team has done really really well, we were second in our competition for two years running and it was really disappointing for our players not to be able to field a team this year.
“We’re hoping with the success of the Matildas it will all change next year. A lot of our Premiers Girls will be aging up into the women’s competition so we’re hoping to snatch a few of those and put a team together again.”
However, she said there were a lot of girls playing in the ranks and with the world cup there was even more interest from players and parents.
“We have are up to 72 young players I think this year which is really great because we have been quite short previously, we haven’t had a lot of young girls player,” she said.
“It was really exciting to see so many young girls coming through.”
She said women’s football had grown quickly in this country over the past few decades and it was so great to see girls teams the whole way through from Cubs (four-year-olds) to seniors.
“And they’ve all got their own age groups now, it’s really exciting,” Newley said.
“We are hoping we will see an increase because of the world cup, we have had a lot of younger siblings of girls who are playing and a lot of facebook posts and a lot of enquiries down at the club. They are starting to realise, hey we could actually play this. It’s not a boys sport girls are able to play it as well.”
Kaitlyn said she has been involved for eleven years after joining as an eight-year-old.
“My brother started playing and I was just kind of dragged into it but then I had a really awesome coach one year that was really into using football as a way for women to gain confidence,” she said.
“That really really inspired me to try hard and give my best and I was just absolutely hooked on it since then.”
Kaitlyn has played for South West Queensland before a knee injury saw her go for reconstruction surgery and since then she has just been playing locally.
Anyone interested in playing for the club next year can contact them through their Facebook group.
