At the end of April, following a six-month application process, 34 clubs and centres were awarded three-year licences for newly-created Regional Talent Clubs (RTC) which will be responsible for the delivery of elite girls’ football development. They will deliver coaching and education to the best young female footballers in the country as part of the Girls’ England Talent Pathway. The pathway aims to support in the identification, development and progression of players with the potential and aspiration to play for the England Women’s Senior team.
The clubs have been grouped into three tiers, dependent on their facilities, workforce, coach and player development, performance service provision and the number of age groups they will work with.
RTCs have replaced the former Centre of Excellence model (and therefore Player Development Centres too), which has caused some upset and distress to players and parents who were settled in the current structure. Interestingly, the model they are mourning the loss of was also heavily criticised when it was introduced four years ago. So, clearly time will tell, though there are some valid questions to be asked.
As part of the changes, RTC age groups will run alongside the academic year, starting in September. For the first time, girls’ U10 and U12 teams will compete in Charter Standard youth leagues (against boys’ and mixed teams), to enable players to further develop both technically and physically. The older age groups will compete in FA organised fixture programmes against other RTCs.
**For further information about the FA Girls’ England Talent Pathway or other playing opportunities in your area, contact your local County FA.**
Here is the link for contacts at each of the RTCs: here.
TALKING A DIFFERENT PATHWAY
Brent Hills, who heads up the Elite Performance Unit (EPU), was Hope Powell’s assistant coach with the England women’s senior team from 2002 and caretaker manager from August to December, 2013.
His stellar background as a coach and educator (and parent) and his knowledge and passion for the women’s game should reassure anyone who feels unsettled by, or doubts the rationale behind the transformation of the talent pathway.
Questions have arisen from parents and players about the new Regional Talent Club (RTC) model and we had a lengthy and interesting talk with Brent about the changes.
Players and parents and coaches had come to understand and were comfortable with the pathway structure as it was, so why the change and why now?
BRENT HILLS: We [The FA & EPU] work to a model of plan, do and review. We’re always looking to squeeze every drop of improvement we can out of any system. The centres have been there for a while. We go on UEFA study trips and, when we play other countries, we’re always looking at how they do it, as well as how other sports in our own country organise things. That’s an ongoing process.
We come together regularly to discuss our findings and, we felt that with the growth of the game it was probably a good time to reorganise given that we all think the sport is going to expand like wildfire over the next 10 years. In the current centres, like in every walk of life, some had stronger deliveries than others, despite us giving them all the same resources. So we’re saying to RTCs, what can you deliver really successfully, even if it’s a little smaller? Built into the three tier system is the opportunity to move up or down, depending on what the club can deliver. So, partly this prepares for that growth but, it also gives clubs the flexibility to decide where they can best use their resources and allows them and those who are delivering – and this is a talent programme remember, it’s not a participation programme – to allocate their resources accordingly.
Was this perhaps a money-based decision?
BRENT HILLS: I’d love to say that money was no object, but it always is. There’s a budget even though we fight for as many resources as we can. I have a team that involves around 12 people and is going to expand in the next few years. If only we could have had these resources 12 or more years ago. We’re in a much better place, but we still only have what we have.
Part of those resources come from Sport England funding, who help to fund the talent programme and they have certain criteria so we must prove regularly that we are spending that money wisely. If you look at other Olympic sports, like basketball after the last Olympics for example, they had their funding withdrawn. So we have to constantly ensure that we’re getting the best bang for our buck, if you like.
We will review annually. I’m very keen on this. We need to make sure we reward RTCs appropriately, who are delivering well and support the clubs that aren’t. If you were to ask me how I see this level of the pathway in 10 years’ time, I would very much hope we have several more RTCs and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case. I and everyone else need to continue to fight for extra resources. As the game grows, the quality improves and, as the playing pool grows, there is every need for an extension of this system (as there would have been with Centres of Excellence) and we have to do it in a manageable fashion. Again, we must emphasise this is a talent programme and not simply a participation programme.
There have been suggestions from some frustrated parents that the distribution of the RTCs represents a ‘postcode lottery’?
BRENT HILLS: We could not dictate which clubs did or did not apply and we’ve tried to fill every geographical hole that we can with the resources that we have. Some players may be impacted geographically by these changes and we will work with them to find the right playing and development opportunities for them. We want to keep the best female players in the game and we don’t want to neglect areas; that’s why we have slightly different models in the east and in the south west, for example.
Because of their rural nature and the lack of playing pool and numbers, the east hasn’t got a club but in the South West there is Yeovil – but travel distances can still be a problem.
I go back to my time in men’s football: I worked with a club and decided one Sunday to go with the youth teams to watch them play. It was a London club, we left at 7am on the Sunday morning and pulled back into the car park at 7pm in the evening. Some of those young lads had only had 35 mins football, which was ridiculous.
So, what we’ve looked at and, it’s been very successful because we’ve gained a lot of players in those regions, is in line with the rules to allow mixed football at higher ages. There are opportunities for girls in those regions to play and still have elite coaching at coaching centres but also not spend an inordinate amount of time travelling between x and y.
The mixed football one is going to be a big thing, in Germany (and Norway and Sweden) they’ve been doing that for years and, this has been part of our research. If you look at a player like Alexandra Popp you can see that she’s played in mixed football to an advanced age (18, I think it was).
Do you think that perhaps the centre of excellence provision was so successful that it took talented players away from boys/mixed football, to the extent that parents and players and coaches are slightly frightened or apprehensive of it?
BRENT HILLS: I don’t believe there is a silver bullet for all of the issues in women’s football. What we need is a suite of things going on. So, if it’s right for you to play in mixed football – though some of our elite players don’t want to – you have to cater for everyone’s needs wherever you can.
We have a small pilot going on with some academies where some of our 15s, 16s and 17s, are training with boys’ academies to allow them one or two extra training sessions a week. We have kept if off the radar but the results have been very, very promising for the girls. That’s an example of something we’d like to expand in the future, wherever we can, so that there’s opportunities for girls all over the country.
One concern has been the amount of travelling required for the older age groups. Will they be traipsing the length of the country for games?
BRENT HILLS: No, games will be regionalised. There might be some fixtures out of region but not many. What we’re trying to make sure is that people don’t spend an inordinate amount of time trundling up and down the country for 40-80 minutes football. When there are good opportunities locally, for instance we’ve left quite a few weekends free, clubs will be obliged to fix up a number of games, which could be against boys’ academies at the appropriate level. For example, you’re an U16 girls’ RTC and you would play an U14 boys’ academy, if that was a challenge for both.
What there is, is a need for balance. Despite what you read in the papers, the vast majority of girls are not going to earn a living playing football. Because of that, their education and their life, is important to them. I’m a dad, I understand that. We believe in supporting dual careers, so if a growing number do get a chance to have a career in football then fantastic but we do have to remember the ones that don’t. And they could be elite players of course.
With the change in the age groups and also simply as an exit route, where do the girls go at 16 when they graduate from the RTCs? Do they go into the Development League?
BRENT HILLS: Well, there are few things we have been looking at for the past year, and this will gain fresh impetus with Baroness Sue Campbell coming in (she has some tremendous ideas which she is formulating at the moment). We want our best players to graduate to whatever level is appropriate. The Development League was set up after calls from clubs for a reserve league but I think that it needs looking at again.
WSL1 has nine clubs so on any given week, only a maximum of 99 players can start a game at the elite level. Now, if growing numbers of foreign players are going to be part of that then that’s even less starts for our young players. It’s a sensitive subject and maybe there’s a case for looking at the rules and regulations. I’ve been a club manager and a head coach at various clubs and I understand the pressure the clubs are under. My focus is to help support the England women vision but that can only be done in harmony with the clubs.
What we’ve got to do is find a way for our best young players to get competitive games. Whether that’s in WSL1 or WSL2 or another entity, we’ve got to keep working towards that. The FA WSL is a separate entity within The FA. We meet regularly, strategy groups etc. and we want to have a competitive league. It would be awful if in 20 years the same two teams are winning the league every year. So we need to find a balance of having a competitive league which may involve foreign players, if they’re tremendous players and they’ll help our players get better but we also need to find a way to ensure our best young players don’t meet a log jam and they can’t get football.
This year in the U19s squad, a lot of them were not playing regular football leading up to the UEFA elite rounds, they were sitting on benches. This is an issue for us if we want England to do well and reach finals. We have got to look at ways to encourage that. One way is to redevelop centres and help them produce stronger and better players but also those stronger and better players and even the ones that are around now need to be playing first team football, wherever that is.
We’re working very hard with the league clubs to work out calendar issues, that’s been proven over the last two years but we’ve got a long way to go. We’ve had a couple of U19s players withdraw from games recently and we had a couple withdraw last year from the UEFA finals, because clubs had games. So those players missed out on a chance to play at a European Finals. If you’re U17 there’s only eight opportunities to play at UEFA top competitions. These are all challenges that we have to try and solve if we want England to do well.
We have had parents suggest that some clubs may have told players that they would be part of their RTC next season before having an open trial, leaving only a few places for displaced former centre players to compete for?
BRENT HILLS: The fact is that there should be trials. In some respects, if I’m at a club with several good players, I might unofficially suggest to them that I would like them to re-sign but we would hope that everyone is running trials and looking for trials. And there IS talent out there. When we opened our selection procedures and changed the system over a year ago in the South West Region, all of a sudden we found 20 girls that had only been playing in mixed football but were better than some of the other girls that we had selected. However, at the time we didn’t recruit from mixed football, not because we didn’t want to but because we only had a certain amount of talent ID resources on the ground, so we tried to funnel girls into centres.
If players move or miss out on an RTC, they have to remember that you have got that mixed football option up to the age of 18. So you could argue, if you get yourself in a decent mixed football group or the appropriate group, there are so many more opportunities for you because there are so many more boys’ clubs. It means you’ve still got an opportunity, while you’re waiting to access the system.
