More women playing football is goal for Spotland ticket offer

Rochdale AFC has joined forces with Link4Life to encourage more women to watch and play football.

A special £10 ticket price for women is on offer for the Rochdale versus Plymouth Argyle game at Spotland on Saturday 18 January. The aim is to encourage more women to get interested in the sport with the opportunity to be part of an exciting professional match. Women attending the match must enter the ground via Turnstile 22 in the Pearl Street Stand

The Club hope that women will get together with family and friends and come along for the first time to watch a live game of football and support their local professional football club.

The initiative is part of a drive to get more women and girls playing football being led by Link4Life who will be at the ground on the day to hand out information on how to get involved in football in the borough. Part of the new adult only ‘activ8teme’ project, and funded by Sport England, Link4Life is promoting eight different sports with the aim of getting 20,000 people more active more often over three years.

New active8teme weekly women only sessions are to start shortly staffed by coaches from Rochdale AFC under their Football in the Community programme. Billed as a way to keep healthy and have fun, the one hour sessions start at 6pm on Tuesday 21 January at Kingsway Park Sports Centre of Turf Hill Road in Rochdale. Designed for complete beginners, no knowledge or experience of football is needed. The active8teme programme is designed to be low cost and easy to access with qualified coaches, no booking and all equipment provided.

Attending the match on Saturday will be Link4Life Interim Chief Executive, Gillian Bishop who spoke about their exciting new partnership with Rochdale Football Club. “We need to do more to get women interested in playing and watching football”, she said. “Hopefully this incentive and the weekly training sessions will be the start of exciting things for women’s football here in the Rochdale borough and it is a great opportunity to promote the other active8teme sessions that are available.”

Keith Hicks, Dale’s Football in the Community Trust Manager added. “Since Rochdale Ladies FC folded a few years ago, Rochdale does not have a women only team and this is a great shame for the town. We all need to work together to offer more opportunities and incentives for women to be involved in football. The match against Plymouth on 18 January will set us off to a great start and sits nicely with plans to develop a women’s only team.”

Plans to further encourage women and girls to take up football will also take a step forward next season when Rochdale Football in the Community will be introducing under 16s/18s/open age teams for girls.

Further information about any of these initiatives is available from Keith Hicks on 01706 644648 or from Julie Durrant at Link4Life on 07976 059 514. Details of activities across a range of sports can be found at www.link4life.org/activ8teme.