The New Year marked the opening of the town’s first ever Girls Emerging Talent Centre!

Facilitated by the Grimsby Town Foundation and coaches from the Club Academy, its launch marks a huge step in supporting Women’s football in the region and its continued development.

Emerging Talent Centres are an FA National Initiative set-up to develop girl’s football across the country, with over 70 sites currently in place to provide elite-level coaching. Until this month, the closest ETCs were in Lincoln, Doncaster and Hull which has meant that promising young female players had to travel over an hour to receive elite coaching.

At the beginning of January, over 140 girls from local grassroots clubs to showcase their talent in front of our academy coaches and Women’s team manager Hayley Cox. The following week, 41 of those girls between the ages of 10 and 16, were selected to begin the 32-week Elite Coaching Program and more youngsters will be added over the coming weeks.

The Foundation will continue to run participation sessions, funded by Premier League Kicks, to the girls who haven’t been selected but still want to have access to regular elite training.

Ben Challen, the Lead Coach for our ETC, said “The Girls ETC is an exciting new project, which is all about giving young girls from the local area an opportunity for additional coaching with access to elite coaches.

“The launch of the ETC will not only support these young girls as individuals, but it will also support the local grassroots teams that they’re a part of, giving them access to elite-level coaching on a weekly basis, on top of their grassroots training sessions and games.”

If there are young female footballers out there who would like to benefit from these coaching sessions in the future, keep an eye on our social platforms for an update in the coming weeks about the Foundation’s planned Premier League Kicks participation sessions.

UTM