South East Phoenix Football Club is an all Female Football Club in the NSW Girls Youth League and Women’s League One competitions.

The Girls Skills Acquisition Program covers girls aged 11, 12 and 13. We expect 3 teams in this competition (36 girls). The Youth League includes girls aged 14, 15 and 16 (48 girls), and Women’s League One for girls aged under 20 (20 girls). This is a total of 104 girls. Our teams are currently not full, and we aim to increase this participation by reducing the costly barrier to play, hence improving accessibility and involvement.

Our club is located on the South Coast of NSW in Nowra, which is a socio-economically disadvantaged area. We know there are many talented indigenous and other disadvantaged girls in our area who can’t consider playing football at this level due to the cost involved.

The barriers for us as a club include the requirement to hire qualified coaches, provide a full kit to all girls each year, provide quality training equipment, fenced fields, and qualified referees. All of these elements are instrumental to playing football at a higher level, which the girls deserve but which incur significant cost along with Football NSW Registration fees including insurance.

The Club is constantly aware of this cost barrier and trying to recruit more sponsors to minimise the cost of fees to the girls, but with the impacts of Covid and hard times for regional businesses this has become increasingly difficult.

We currently have girls from many different backgrounds, some with indigenous and economic disadvantage in the Nowra region. We know however that there are numerous girls in these circumstances whose talent is being overlooked due to this cost barrier. Having fewer than full teams impacts the club’s bottom line significantly as the costs involved in fielding teams remains the same, but the revenue from fees is reduced.

The receipt of this grant will benefit each and every girl receive reduced fees, and improve accessibility of our competition to other talented girls. It will increase opportunities to those who would not otherwise have afforded to play football at this level. For the club, we believe this will result in full teams, which will result in our club being more financially viable as the only income we receive is a small portion of registration fees, sponsorships and canteen revenue. Having quality equipment provided will benefit the girls training as well as reduce their fees at the same time – we believe it would be a wonderful result for the game of football, the girls and our club.