Vale’s Vision

Chairman Luke Williams explains how a Vale of Glamorgan club founded in April 2012 by coaches already working in the female game may already be the largest female-only football club in Wales, with up to 140 players from age six to senior level. The growth, he says, comes from community provision: free after-school taster sessions through the summer of 2012 used the Olympic Games as a catalyst, and school-club links were then extended into a primary school girls’ league that has run for over two years with more than a thousand attendances and twenty participating schools. A secondary school league for 11 to 14-year-olds followed in 2013/14, and the annual summer festival drew a record 186 girls in 2014. The ambition is a senior side in the Welsh Premier League within seven to ten years.