Report by Jenna Davies
Casey was among a number of specially trained football coaches to give advice and support for the girls - aged between five and 16 - throughout the day and encourage more involvement in women’s football.
The week certainly had Casey’s support as she believes women’s football does not receive sufficient recognition. She revealed that when she started playing as a child it was extremely difficult to be accepted as a footballer as the only way to play was with boys.
“Unfortunately, when I was younger there were no opportunities to play girls’ football. There were no girls teams. It was the concept of ‘girls can’t play football’. I couldn’t play for the boys teams in Sunday matches, but things are starting to change now.”
It was only when she was thrust into action by her mother that she had the chance to prove herself, and the boys soon realised she was, in fact, better than them.
“My mum put me into a boys’ team and when I turned up with hair down to my hip they looked at me like I had two heads. But I got players’ player of the year, which was a big thing for me to get their acceptance.
“If we can change a small percentage of attitudes then we’re half way there. Obviously the more publicity we get the more awareness there is of women’s football.”
A classic case of women’s football being overlooked occurred back in 2007, when Charlton disbanded its ladies’ squad after the men’s team were relegated. And that is something that still boils Casey’s blood to this day, having been an important member of that team.
“They needed to cut money and the first thing that was going to go was the women’s team. The reason I was angry was the way it was done. I played for that club for six years and we won so many trophies, but to this day I’ve never been given a thank you. That’s why I was angry.”
The event on 26th June was hosted by the Loughton Academy and the girls from local schools played in a fun and friendly tournament that was set up to test their football skills. Casey saw the day as a huge success: “It’s a fantastic idea. Nearly 300 girls playing with role models and people they can look up to helping them is great. Some of these girls would never have played football, they would have come here today and enjoyed themselves and will play again.
“It’s massively important that we get girls playing at grass roots level and then they will move on with the FA and Tesco putting money into coaching programmes across the country. Hopefully that will help produce more talented players. We need more girls coming through to challenge for international honours.”
The aim of the week was to give more girls information on how to get involved in football in their area and increase the current number of 150,000 females playing affiliated football in England. Thousands of girls want to play football up and down the country but simply do not know how to go about it. With people like Casey and events like this lending a hand it may not be long before that number starts to fall.
