Growth in women's football "massive" says Bristol coach
The Lionesses efforts are inspiring new people into the game every week
Last updated 28th Jul 2023
As England's Lionesses continue their FIFA Women's World Cup campaign across Australia and New Zealand, we're hearing how their efforts are inspiring a huge growth in the game in the West Country.
Ellie Haines, who is 22, is both a coach of the under-11's and vice-chair at Bristol Ladies Union Football Club (BLU FC) and tells us the change in the sport since she started playing a decade ago, is clear.
"The interest is massive," she said.
"Last year we had an under nines team for the first time ever and we're getting more and more girls interested.
"Especially since the Euros (which England won last summer), at the start of the season, so in September, we were getting four or five emails enquiring about whether we had space and whether they could come along to training, each week and we're still, even now this far on, we're still getting one or two enquiries a week..."
Women's football on the up
The popularity of women's football globally has been rising rapidly for several years now as coverage improves.
In fact the game is now so big that the top three highest attendances across all European football in 2022, were from women's games.
Barcelona's UEFA Champions League semi-final first leg against Wolfsburg topped the table, with 91,648 fans packing the Camp Nou, while the Catalans managed to draw in a huge 91,553 fans for their clash against Spanish rivals Real Madrid in the quarter finals.
England's European Championship final victory over Germany at Wembley came third on the list with 87,192 fans watching on, plus millions more on television.
Logic suggests such exposure would lead to an increase in grassroots participation and clearly that is happening.
"When I was a kid you wouldn't name a women's footballer if you were playing football," Ellie said.
"But now we have all of the girls running round, we have our goalkeeper Abbie who's obsessed with Mary Earps (England's goalkeeper), she'll always be pretending to be her, diving around.
"We actually have three mannequins for equipment and they're called Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and (Alessia) Russo.
"They're just household names now and the girls are obsessed with them."
The Change
Today, images of the Lionesses can be found in most sporting shops and on billboards across the country, but 10 years ago when Ellie was 12, she says she started playing largely out of spite (our words not hers).
"I was kind of like rebel," she said.
"Women's football wasn't really a thing, I'd always go against the grain, so I'd want to play women's football purely because it wasn't a big thing for girls."
Ellie also stressed the importance of role models, saying her female PE teacher had a big influence.
"My PE teacher, she always played football," she said.
"If I didn't have her around me then I suppose I wouldn't have been so interested in getting into football because it is stereotypically a boy's sport."
Now BLU FC have multiple teams across age groups from under-10 upwards, but a decade ago it was nothing like that.
"I remember we used to struggle to actually get a team together when I first started," Ellie said.
"I remember our manager at the time, he had three daughters on the team, he had triplets, and in order to have enough players on a Sunday we'd also have to get their younger sister to play for us as well."
Now, BLU FC are holding events so the players can watch the World Cup together, while Ellie will shortly be flying to Australia to watch the matches in person.
The Future
Ellie says she is starting to see more funding flowing into women's football from earlier age groups, which will help put it more on an equal footing with the men's game.
"We are starting to see that in women's football, with a lot more younger people getting into it and hopefully therefore more money is going to go into the younger game.
"The only way is up from here."
England's Lionesses face Denmark in their second game of the FIFA Women's World Cup at 9:30am UK time on Friday (July 28).
The match will be broadcast live on BBC One.