Parkwood Rangers FC: Ladies Team

With the season fast approaching this is the time for action
part of the season and the focus goes up a notch, we have set up a decent pre-season program deliberately avoiding teams from our division but teams good enough for us to be ready in time for the Maidstone game.

We have chosen to play our first two games against Premier division sides so we can have tough matches to get our players up to match fitness and sharpness back. Our third game we are hoping to change the
focus to team tactic and keeping shape and our last game the focus will be about putting all together.

As to date we have never won a pre season friendly match so last week result is no surprise and the result will not set the alarm bells ringing across the league which is good for us, I was pleased generally with the game and could see we are working in the right direction overall.

I can now confirm that Amy is now in crutches and will be out for 4-6 weeks, whilst Debbie’s ankle injury is not as bad as first feared and
made it through training un- scathed this week. Becky is also back to training again after her recurrence of an ankle injury at Eastbourne.

We have 16 players confirmed signings for next season, with three more players verbally wanting to sign, however they have not been to training since our signing on day, so I am not 100% sure what their intentions are. This uncertainty is causing us a minor problem on the purchasing of kit – do we order and budget for 16 or 19?

One of the observations from the Olympics is how other sports has progressed since 1996 when we won one gold in Atlanta, a factor is money has been invested over the years in coaches and in improving facilities.

I have said for many years that way forward is investing in sporting potential for any club and have advocated it in this blog before.

Sporting Potential: the quality of coaching x the quality of training facilities and equipment x time available to the sports person or team.

We are fortunate that we part of the FA ladies Pyrimid Football structure and enjoy all the trapping that that brings, however it does cause problems as well. I have made it no secret that we should have the capabilty of meeting the FA Ladies Ground C status for a varity of reason's.

Looking at the FA criteria our changing rooms actually meet the standard, what the are not:- pleasent on the eye so tomorrow I am going down to a DIY store to purchase paint and will be spending this week decorating the inside of the changing rooms for the start on the new season.

In part I am investing in potential. This will not suddenly make us Olympic champions, but we would be over halfway in meeting FA's criteria to a satisfactory standard. The dilemma I face is the best way meet the rest of the criteria and who pay's for it. But that for another day but the reason why is simple to answer: Atlanta 1 London 26.

I have put out a suggestion for an end of season tour to Bournemouth, although it is not compulsory to attend the option is open to all registered players.

See you all on Wednesday and hopefully we should another good game.

Andy