SINGAPORE – Girls’ football will be included in the School Football Academy (SFA) programme with Methodist Girls’ School (MGS) and Woodlands Secondary School coming on board in 2023, the Unleash The Roar! (UTR) committee announced on Monday.
Yishun and Bendemeer’s boys’ teams will also join the SFA project in 2023, while Queensway and Meridian will no longer be involved. The other schools with SFA teams are Montfort, Seng Kang, Singapore Sports School, Anglo-Chinese (Barker), Serangoon Garden, St Patrick’s, Assumption English and Jurongville.
The SFA programme was launched in July as a pipeline to produce young players with sound technical ability, complementing existing pathways at youth teams of local football clubs and private academies.
MGS forward Caitlin Goh, whose school will partner Boon Lay Secondary School and Westwood Secondary for the SFA, said: “I’m looking forward to the new opportunities and the new coaches we’ll get to experience.
“With the SFA, we’ll now have access to a lot more resources in terms of football training, skills development and all that in contrast to just school-based programmes.”
When asked about the selection criteria for picking the two schools, a UTR committee spokesman said that football in MGS “was initiated by a group of like-minded girls and teachers in 2013 and became a full co-curricular activity in 2016”, while Woodlands has “a long history of girls’ football” and has “demonstrated sports excellence and developed its niche” in football (boys and girls) and sepak takraw over the years.
In 2019, Woodlands were runners-up in the National Inter-School Football Championship for the girls’ C Division.
MGS, which currently competes in the B and C division tournaments, “aims to provide students who have an interest in football with the opportunity and pathway to grow and develop their passion and skills in an inclusive and supportive environment”, added the spokesman.
Under the SFA, players aged 13 to 16 will train four times a week and play significantly more games in the year compared to those in other secondary schools.
In addition to the National School Games, they could play in other competitions and even go for overseas training stints.
Caitlin, who began playing football competitively in 2021, is excited about such opportunities, having benefited from playing more friendlies as part of the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) Under-14 Girls’ Development Games 2022, which organised small-sided matches for players.
The Secondary 3 student noted how she got to play matches weekly via the programme as compared to just one or two friendly games during school camps twice every year.
Each SFA will have a team of full-time coaches, both local and from La Liga, and they will report to a head coach with a “A” licence from one of the sport’s regional governing bodies and relevant youth development experience. There will also be specialist coaches in the areas of goalkeeping, strength and conditioning, as well as performance analysts.
Ling Beng Huat, MGS’ teacher-in-charge of football, hopes this will result in more stability for his team, who have mainly relied on volunteer coaches since they started as an interest group in 2013.
Ling, 62, said: “In a way, it’s good because they learn from different coaches but stability-wise, it’s not there.
“They may not have a coach who stays with them for four years so that is the concern because the team goes through a lot of changes of coaches, which might get a little confusing sometimes if they have a different style of play and things like that.”
The inclusion of Boon Lay and Westwood will also help to expand the base of female footballers in Singapore, he added.
Woodlands’ Nadila Nur Danisha, a national Under-14 player, dreams of playing football overseas. The 14-year-old said: “I feel motivated now and I hope my teammates feel the same way. I look forward for me and my teammates to improving and working hard together.”
