Albion's players celebrate.
Image by: Geoff Penn
Brighton & Hove Albion elite women and girls football manager, Tracy Doe, believes it has been a successful start to the season for the women’s academy and development squad sides.Albion officially linked up with Worthing College in the summer to set up a brand new academy side that plays in the ECFA Premier League - the highest possible level which a female team can play at college football.
The team have played two league games so far, beating Barking Abbey 2-0 along with a 3-1 defeat to Solihull College.
Doe believes that James Marrs, who also coaches Albion’s first team, and Dan Wright are doing an excellent job with the current group, and she hopes to attract some top England players to feature for the side.
She told seagulls.co.uk, “James and Dan have done exceptionally well with the group of girls that we’ve got and we’re expecting big things from them this season.
“Like all Brighton teams we want to get the ball down and play football. I must say that the scorelines have been flattering, not only to the team that we’ve beaten but also to the team we lost to.
“We’re now looking at trying to attract some of the top England players in the 16-19 year-old age groups to play for us.”
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The head of the women's set-up then reflected on a solid start to the season for the development squad, who have picked up three wins out of four so far in the Reserves Southern Division.The Seagulls started the season with 7-1, 3-1 and 2-1 victories over Gillingham, Lewes and Charlton respectively before a narrow 3-2 defeat at West Ham United.
“They’ve managed three wins out of four so far this season and that’s nothing more than I’d expect. For me it is important that the development squad play to the standard of a WSL development side.
“I still think there’s more to give. I watched them play two weeks ago against Lewes and they made slightly hard work of it but there’s still a lot of potential in the squad.
“It is important that the standard of the development squad is as close as possible to the first team because we want to give our under-17 players a chance to play senior football.
“We have some really talented players coming through from the centre, as I’ve already put two players forward for the England under-17s, so that bodes extremely well for the future of women’s football at this club.”
[h=3]ALBION V MIDDLESBROUGH
[/h]SATURDAY 18TH OCTOber, KICK-OFF 3PM
[h=3]ALBION V ROTHERHAM
[/h]SATURDAY 25th OCTOBER, KICK-OFF 3PM
[h=3]Albion v WIGAN
[/h]tuESDAY 4TH NOVEMber, kick-off 7:45pm
Original article