BY JANA MCCABE
It’s safe to say that everything has fallen into place for Ballymena Women this season with their Junior Section stronger than ever and their Seniors sitting third in the Women’s Championship B table in just their second season competing.
When the Women’s Section began in September 2016 there were only nine girls but now the club consists of 160 members.
“When they decided to bring girls rugby into Ballymena my daughter was desperate to play and I said I could help with admin and, seven years later, here we are!” Women and Girls Convenor Aine Fraser stated.
“We started with U12s and U14s because we thought that’s the ages we could get numbers and then we went from there, bringing in U16s and then minis a couple of years later.”
“The minis numbers are great, and they feed into the youth. Then we reached the point at the end of last season that we had a strong youth group and a number of girls had been spotted for Ulster, so we knew we had to get a Senior side up and running”.
“We always had a few girls, including my daughter, who were always too old for what was happening at the time, so they were never getting matches and lingering on. So they were there at the start of the Seniors and we scrapped through with 10-12 girls last season and then we’re doing really, really well this season. It’s all fallen into place.”
Last season the Senior side won no matches. However, this season is a very different story with the team winning 50% of their games and are 16 points clear of Queens University Seconds who sit fourth.
“It has also been a shock to us. Last season was just about getting a team out on the pitch, but those ten girls who stuck with us no matter what are now the backbone of what we have now. Because of them we have started attracting new girls and a couple of girls that had left us from the Youth to go to Ulster have come back.”
In early November Scott Dowds-Moffat was brought in as Head Coach to help Ryan Moore who had led the side during their first season and is now Forwards Coach.
“I say to everyone ‘you’re doing so well’ and they all say it’s because of the girls in the group and the ones that are coming on board are taking the same attitude as well. It’s just a great bunch and it’s not just me saying that because I’m biased! I’ve seen them go through a season winning nothing but coming off and being pleased that they improved each time. Obviously now they’re wanting to win as they know what we’re capable of, but that attitude is still there. They come off and they look to improve every time.”
There is a family sense to the club with Aine’s daughter still playing and now Captain of the Seniors. Mother and daughter, Kirsty and Chrissy Hill, play for the Seniors, with other mums getting involved because their daughters play for the minis.
On top of this, all the minis and youth coaches are parents with coaches and parents from across all three sections working together to fundraise and organise events.
Aine is a schoolteacher, something that has positively impacted the minis with one-third of the squad attending the primary school she teaches at.
“It’s very funny to watch them from school to rugby as they go from Mrs Fraser to Aine! They whisper and you can always hear someone say, ‘are you allowed to call her Aine?”. It’s quite funny”.
“The minis are where a lot of our goals and aims are. We feel that it’s difficult to get girls at the age range of 16-18 who haven’t played rugby to get on board. You’ll get the odd few, but we’re hoping by focusing on the minis in time that that will help our U12 and U14 have good numbers and that will gradually get to our U18s”.
“Our U14 and U16s are merged with Cooke and our U18s with Rainey and Ballymoney at the minute but we are the largest number in all of them. My thinking is if we keep the numbers coming on through that, in a couple of years, we’ll have stand-alone across the board.
“With our Seniors the aim is to keep going in the direction we are and to keep getting better and better.
“You see teams with not as strong youth structures struggle because it’s not that easy to get adults in but, with our setup, I’m confident we’ll have Seconds and Thirds in the next five years.
“At the end of the day, if you’re able to go out and see the girls at your club enjoying playing rugby, everything else will fall into place.”
