SINGAPORE - For years, Still Aerion Women's Football Club struggled with the problem of not having a regular training ground.

This meant that players travelled anywhere from Boon Lay to Tampines to train - depending on which fields they were able to book under Sport Singapore's (SportSG) dual-use scheme.

But this uncertainty over their training venue has also impacted attendance among the players, who are students and working professionals.

But the club have enjoyed more stability in the past few months and has been training at Bukit Gombak Stadium, thanks to support from national agency SportSG, which is leading the Unleash The Roar! project with the Football Association of Singapore (FAS).

President Pamela Kong is hopeful that things will change for the better as the FAS announced at the Women's Football Conference 2022 Singapore on Saturday (March 5) plans to introduce a club licensing system for women's amateur clubs.

She said: "It's going to be a long journey. Ideally we'll work towards a professional league in Singapore and this is one small step towards that big goal, but this is a good first step to have."

Club licensing was first introduced to the FAS in 2011 as a list of basic criteria for S-League clubs to participate in Asian Football Confederation (AFC) club competitions such as the AFC Champions League and AFC Cup.

The move to implement a club licensing system for women's teams is part of the FAS' plans to lift the local women's league.

The project pilot will start with a two-year education phase to help clubs meet the criteria required to attain a licence, before the system is enforced from 2024.

The criteria that clubs must satisfy in order to be licensed fall under five main categories: sporting, infrastructure, legal, administration and personnel, and finance.

The Straits Times understands that seven Women's Premier League clubs will be involved in the pilot.

Kong added that she hopes the introduction of a club licensing system will also bring stability to the league that often sees clubs coming and going.

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong, who was the event's guest of honour, also announced that girls' football would be included in the School Football Academy (SFA) programme, which aims to become a pipeline to produce young players with sound technical ability.

It was announced last year that 10 schools would come on board under a pilot SFA programme from 2022 and that these institutions would eventually compete in a youth league that runs through the year.

Each SFA will have a team of at least four to five full-time coaches, including specialist coaches in the areas of goalkeeping, strength and conditioning, and performance analysts.

The list of schools offering girls football that will be part of the SFA programme has not been finalised, but Philippe Aw, FAS' head of methodology and interim technical director, said schools like Queensway and Meridian Secondary will be included.

Aw said: "The quality of training will improve. It's quite holistic, which will allow them to progress faster.

"The other thing comes back to academics that the girls will be able to balance both. That's very important, the assurance to the parents."

Justin Fernandez, Queensway Secondary School's head of department for co-curricular activities (CCA), added that the SFA programme could incentivise more schools to maintain a girls' football CCA.

As of 2020, there were 11 schools that offered girls' football as a CCA.

He said: "We don't have that many schools, it varies. With SFA, there is a commitment from the school that I will recruit girls for the SFA and I will put them through a structured programme.

"This commitment is important if we want a larger base of girls to play and from there, you develop the elite players."

To increase participation in the women's game, the ActiveSG Football Academy (AFA) will also be introducing all-female Under-12 and U-17 programmes. The AFA currently accepts girls, but under a co-ed programme.

AFA principal Aleksandar Duric said: "Girls have not had a chance, especially younger ones. You see very few coming out to play or they don't know where to sign up so this is the best option for us to spread the word. We have to start from the grassroots, from the community.

"There's a big gap (in the number of girls and boys) and we need to try to make the gap smaller."