We recently caught up with Dafydd Evans, secretary of our women’s teams. “Busy” was a key word that he used to describe their first season. However, he was keen to point out that “we have a strong committee in place and a good team of coaches” and mentioned that a real team effort has led to the club receiving an FAW Bronze Accreditation Award. He added that the women’s teams were “extremely grateful” for the support of their sponsors: Selectrical, Proweld Fabrication, Lucror Consulting and Anglesey Aggregates.

At the moment, the women’s club has 70 players who are spread across four age groups: under-10s, under-12s, under-14s and under-16s. There are plans to start an under-8s team as well, and work towards creating a Senior Women’s Team that will play next season are currently at the scoping phase.

Bad weather has resulted in several postponements this season, but Dafydd noted that “when we had a run of matches, you could see the difference”. He added that “the girls keep turning up to training and matches, which means we must be doing something right”. During the lockdown, the players have apparently been really missing football but have been remaining in contact with team mates via Facetime while coaches have been staying in touch via WhatsApp. One of the coaches has recently registered for a Level 1 Coaching Course, and the Bangor 1876 first team coaches have kindly offered to create individual training plans.

Looking towards the new season, one of Dafydd’s hopes is that better weather will lead to fewer postponements. He commented that “all the teams have been working pretty much independently this season” but said that “we’d like to bring some consistency to our approach to playing across all age groups”. This is a strategy which he hopes will lead to “girls progressing through the age groups” and finding that “the coaching and playing style is the same”. He added that “we’ll be working closely with Iwan Williams and tapping into Mel Jones’s experience to achieve this, which will see us raise the bar in terms of developing the girls’ technical ability”.

Anyone who is interested in finding out more about the women’s and girls’ teams can get in touch via e-mail (cpdmbangor@gmail.com) and follow the teams on Twitter (@cpdmbangor1876) and Facebook (CPD Merched Bangor 1876).