Sport
21 January, 2025
Maryborough Soccer Club hopeful a women’s team will make a comeback in local comp
The Maryborough Soccer Club is hoping to get the ball rolling on the return of a local women’s soccer team with a Q&A this Thursday.
The club has been unable to field a women’s team since 2022, where they finished with one victory in the Ballarat and District Soccer Association competition.
Kicking off at 7 pm at the Maryborough Community Hub on 48 Burns Street, technical director Garry George said the Q&A hopes to gauge community interest in a possible return.
“What we are looking to do is to get as many women and teenagers to come down and just engage in the conversation,” he said.
“We are keen to get a women’s soccer team up and running, but we want to do it when the situation is right and ensure we do it properly.
“We want to get people down and find out who’s interested and those who are interested in soccer who haven’t engaged with our club.
“We know there are five or six women who live in Maryborough that are travelling to Ballarat and Creswick to play soccer.
“We want to cater to those people and get them engaged with our club and create an environment where they feel they can play soccer in our town.”
The Q&A aims to build off the futsal program the club ran at the Tullaroop Leisure Centre which was well received.
According to George, the futsal program, alongside revamping the women’s soccer program, provides women more chances to build friendships while staying physically active.
“There are opportunities for sport in the town in things like netball and I know that women’s football is starting to take off,” he said.
“I think with soccer, it’s a bit more of a global game, so if we get migrants moving into the town, people coming to work at the hospital from other cultures, it provides another opportunity for them to settle in the town.
“Socially, it’s really important to be involved in a club and a community, I know we have loads of mums of our junior players, they have really engaged with the game and I think there’s a chance one or two of them might get involved.
“For the whole town, the more sporting opportunities and social avenues we can create, the better for making it an attractive place to live.”
Despite having no girls teams currently, many girls are currently playing for the club as part of the boy’s junior competition.
George hopes restarting the women’s team will allow girls to continue playing their soccer in Maryborough as they climb up the ranks.
“We want to try and create a pathway so that eventually if we were to get a girl’s team up and running, there’s a women’s team for them to play in,” he said.
“They can play up to under 12’s with the boys so we have got some girls playing in the lower age groups and we want to create a pathway for women’s soccer by the time those girls are getting a bit older.
“We ran a MiniTillies program which is an introductory junior program for young girls that ran last year in the winter and it was pretty successful — we had eight or nine young girls that came along and played.
“We are also encouraging female coaching, our new president Sami McClelland has started working with the juniors to engage with some coaching qualifications this year so we have female coaches in place.”
The Maryborough Soccer Club women’s soccer Q&A is on this Thursday, January 23 from the Maryborough Community Hub on 48 Burns Street at 7 pm.
George said the club would appreciate any feedback it receives which could make a return reality.
“We encourage people to come down and have a say and tell us what they want so that we can start to put those things in place,” he said.
“If we didn’t think we were definitely able to get a team, we wouldn’t rush it, but at the same time, the main focus is to get a women’s team up and running for the 2025 season.
“If that’s not possible, then at least we would take the feedback that we get and we will build and put those foundations in place so that we are ready to go next year or whenever we have got the demand.”