BY MIKE TUA
THERE is a certain uncertainty and perhaps also a certain fact, at the tremendous rise of challenges faced by women’s football in the Solomon Islands over the past decades.
As far as the newly elected Solomon Islands Football Federation (SIFF) administration and executive is concerned, they are here to remove the misconception and once again resurrect the development of women’s football in the country.
Diane Justus, the SIFF Women Development Officer says the future of women’s football in the Solomon Islands looks positive but few strings need to be attached to make eventually make it happen.
She said the development of women’s football competition is a very vital tool to constantly promote and nature women’s football to the highest level.
“By establishing the right level of women’s football competitions or domestic football league is the practical heart of football development in the country because if there are no competitions established everything won’t work out in the right direction.
“Competitions can develop more tactical exposure and more experience for our present and future female footballers in the country. Any organized competition – whether at the grassroots, youth, or senior-level tournaments – brings technical and tactical progress because establishing it will signify that women’s football in the country is moving forward in the right direction,” she told Solomon Women.
Diane’s role as a SIFF Women Development officer mainly focuses on the development of women’s football in the country.
She said for us to achieve a worthy women’s national team, we need to have good preparation at the grassroots level of football development.
“A good grassroots football development program can eventually improve our young generation of football talented players, for example, a school of excellence program for female players from under-12 level, youth level, and senior-level can help women football players to achieve prominence in future competitions.
“At the moment we have talented players in the women’s national team but they don’t have the required technical and tactical knowledge and skills to play football at the highest level of regional and international competitions.
“Because it is only through the women’s national team that can guarantee us to get up there in terms of regional and international competitions, therefore, to move forward the level of women’s football into the future, we need to increase our priority on the grassroots football development programs and activities.
She added that not only are players to be developed to that level but we also need to develop good coaches as well to help shape players in the right direction.
“To get women’s football up there in terms of competition, we also need good qualified and properly trained coaches to develop players at the grassroots level, youth level, and senior-level because even though we have good players but we don’t have good coaches we cannot achieve good results for our country.”
The SIFF Women Development officer said at the moment, we are working to finalize the long-term strategic plan for the women’s football development for the next four years.
“By establishing a strategic plan, it will help us with the plan of activities for the development of women’s football in the country.”
She said we also need a lot of financial support from the government, NGOs, faith-based organizations, and business communities to achieve the strategic plan because if we don’t work together we can’t move forward in the future development of women’s football in the country.
“To develop women’s football in the country, we also need to establish a strong network and also a strong technical partnership backing from other relevant stakeholders because women need a lot of financial support from them to drive the development of women football forward into the near future.”
She believed that another obvious challenge experience over the years is the lack of positive public support to encourage the young generation of women football players.
“There is not enough encouragement and constructive comments from the public in supporting women footballers in the country, I believe there is a lot of premature criticism women footballers have faced over the years in terms of producing negative comments about individual players from the majority in the public.
“However, I also believe that women footballers also need to improve their actions and attitudes on and off the field as well to gain more respect from the public.
“And also, women footballers need to possess strong self-esteem and belief that if men can do it we can also do it as well because from that mindset we can see or gain more constructive and positive support from the majority of the population in the country,” she added.
Meanwhile, she said that despite the social, religious, and cultural challenges or negative perceptions from the public, female players, coaches, and even the referees need to prove themselves and ensure their priorities are right; because we need to prove ourselves that we can reach our target goals.
“We need to have a strong mentality and sense of responsibility to prove what is wrong in the past to something positive in the future to achieve a higher competitive and positive reputation in football in the country.
“Because what we found out is that women don’t fully live up to their potential as a professional footballer, the majority don’t continue to achieve their higher reputation as professional footballers but they intend to leave prematurely because of early pregnancy and early marriage or sometimes when they get married their partners don’t have positive support to let them continue with their football careers.
“Therefore, I encourage female footballers to be serious about their football career and to aim high and to never give up because everything has its timing.”
