It's an exciting time for girls’ and women’s football in Northern Ireland with the upcoming UEFA Women’s U19 European Championship taking place 8th-20th August.
National Women’s Manager Alfie Wylie has been using the busy summer period (July and August) to provide two sessions per day, Monday to Friday, at venues across Northern Ireland for girls in the regional excellence programme and elite/development squads.
The double sessions provided are a combination pitch sessions that are skill based, thus providing the players with extra contact time over the summer months, alongside strength and conditioning session’s to improve fitness levels for all of our older squads.
Additionally they are combining gym based work with athletics and gymnastics based coaching with the aim to accommodate the younger female players into conditioning related work.
Utilising athletics and gymnastics based activities, the programme is enhancing body awareness/coordination, flexibility, balance and general strength. This will seek to develop foundational fitness; which will accelerate the progress of the young girls into gym based training.
Players from the Northern Ireland Senior Women’s team, U19 and U17 squads as well as players from the development squads and regional excellence programme are invited to partake in the sessions on offer.
These are taking place at the Dub playing fields, Belfast, Mid-Ulster Sports Arena, Cookstown, The Lakeland Forum, Fermanagh, Holy Cross College, Strabane, Magee College, Londonderry and Ulster University, Jordanstown campus.
The latter is also home of the new Girls’ and Women’s Performance Academy and is providing the girls a taster of what is on offer as they progress through the elite development pathway.‘’
