We can bend it like Beckham too

8:21am Tuesday 15th April 2008

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Maxine Gordon meets the girls who prove football is not just a man's game.

WOMEN'S football has come a long way since Gregory's Girl, the Scottish film comedy where Dorothy was the lone girl in the school football team.

Today, playgrounds and pitches are full of girls playing football - and there are more all-female teams than ever.

"Girls football is the biggest growing sport," says Gordon Staniforth, former York City player who now runs the Sports Development Centre at York College.

Although it still lags far behind men's sport and the women's game in the US and Europe, there's no doubt that female football in the UK is on the rise. In 1993, there were 80 teams; now there are more than 1,800 with some 55,000 players across Britain.

On Saturday, the pitches at York college were filled with more than 100 girls from the York and the surrounding area playing the beautiful game.

As members of the North Riding County FA Centre For Excellence For Girls, they are among the best players in the area - and perhaps the future stars of tomorrow.

Gordon believes the women's game will become professionalised in the near future.

"In the next five years there will be the same sort of league for women, and it will be based on TV," he said. "They are the ones that have the money. If they advertisers come, they will pour money into it."

York College is doing its bit too, through its Football Development Centre, which opened eight years ago and admitted girls two years later.

Today, there are 16 girls aged from 16 to 19 on the programme, which mixes academic study with football.

The young women - all talented footballers in their own right - undergo intensive training, play matches and learn how to coach alongside studying for academic qualifications. "Football is a great motivator," says Gordon. "My students achieve above average compared to students on other courses. We do threaten them. They have to study or we take the ball away for two weeks."

Sixteen-year-old York twins Dominique and Francesca Hall don't need any threats in order to study and play hard. Both are enrolled at York College on science A-Level courses and want to go on to university - Dominique wants to be a research chemist and Francesca wants to study biomedical science.

As students on the college's football development programme, they are also able to pursue their love of the game.

Dominique - only one minute older than her twin - was the first to catch the soccer bug, playing at primary school then joining the York Tigers when she was ten. Francesca joined with some other friends a year later. And they've never looked back. Besides playing at York College, they turn out for Huntington Ladies every Sunday in the North Riding County Cup League.

Dominique said: "The best times of my life have been when I've been playing football.

I love the adrenaline of playing, of working harder, running faster than your opponent, getting the ball and making a pass ahead."

Francesca added: "It's also great socially; you get to play with friends and meet lots of new people."

And both say football at college is a great way to bust the stress of A-Levels.

"It makes you take a break," says Dominique.

"You work so hard for you're A-Levels and it is great to have a rest and come and play football. It's a great way to let off all your stress."

Francesca concurs. "I really enjoy a break from work. Rather than just sitting around with friends having coffee, it's great to do something physical."

The Sports Development Centre, which also includes programmes for basketball and rugby, can help open doors for youngsters looking for a job in the football industry, such as coaches and development officers.

For 16-year-old Emma Coates, of Copmanthorpe, her goal in life is to make a career in football.

One of the best players in the city, Emma plays for Leeds United's girls' squad and has played for England in the English Colleges League.

With her father, Chris, a football coach, big brother Steven a former Scarborough player and now a coach in America and an uncle who played for West Brom, it's perhaps no surprise that Emma caught football fever.

"I've been playing forever - since I could walk," said Emma, who is studying for A-Levels in biology, psychology and PE.

Like the Hall twins, Emma wants to go on to university, but in California.

"I'm trying to get into UCLA, and hopefully go on to become a player or a coach - it's something I have wanted since I was seven," said Emma.

"Women's football is much bigger in America. They play in big stadiums. Whether I go on to become a player depends on how it goes at university.

"If not, I'd like to go into sports management or rehab."

Although Emma may have to go to America to make it as a professional in the woman's game, if Gordon's predictions are right, younger girls may have the opportunity to make it on home turf.

The sport is short of female coaches, a problem which the York College programme and similar ones across the UK hope to address.

Gordon said: "We need women to coach girls, and not just because they can go into the locker room. It's better for girls to have a female coach; she can identify with the way they play and kick a ball. And it's also important for young girls to have female role models."

* Find out more about football opportunities at York College at www.yorkcollege.ac.uk/sportsdevelopmentcentre