FA Game Changer — 5-Year Plan

Tony Leighton reports on the FA’s £3.5 million, five-year ‘Game Changer’ strategy, which comes into operation in 2013 and aims to make women’s football the second most played team sport of either sex in England by 2018. Other objectives include a women’s Elite Performance Unit based at St George’s Park, the expansion of the Super League from eight to twenty ‘beacon clubs’, and a stronger national team. Kelly Simmons, the FA’s Head of National Game, rejects the charge of over-ambition, pointing to more than 100,000 women who want to play, and says the whole pyramid will be reviewed. Hope Powell calls it a positive statement of intent that now has to be delivered.