Summer Switch Calls For Women’s Football
Hope Powell, the national women’s team coach, and the Football Association’s head of national game, Kelly Simmons, have called for a switch to summer football for the whole of the women’s game.
The call comes just four months before the start of the newly revamped Super League’s inaugural season but for Powell at least, the proposal is not a new plea.
She said: ‘When I was a player I always felt we should be playing in the summer. Moving the entire game to summer couldn’t realistically be done from day one, but hopefully we can work towards that and it would be great if it happens.’
Simmons added: ‘We want to grow the women’s game and I believe that taking it into the summer would attract more players and spectators. The WSL will be a closed league for two years but if the Premier League then becomes the feeder it would be a better fit if that league and the pyramid below it were played in the summer.’
The FA could take pointers from Scotland, where the junior sector’s 2009 switchover was followed this year by the launch of the March-November Premier League.
‘It’s been a great success,’ the executive administrator, Maureen McGonigle, said. ‘We’ve had few problems, there were no call-offs and the standard of play has been impressive and improving.’
