This key message has shone through on day two of the FIFA/OFC Women’s Development Seminar as Oceania’s member associations present their success stories and the trials of overcoming the barriers that have hindered growth in the past.
A near perfect example of trial and error came from Samoa’s representatives Tala Saveaalii and Just Play project manager and women’s development officer Lynette Faaiuaso who presented a case study on the highly successful Soccer Sisters Festival.
Following the registration of just two teams for a proposed women’s league in 2012 the Football Federation Samoa team were forced to postpone and head back to the drawing board to find other ways to get more girls involved in the game.
What they came up with proved successful on a number of levels.
The Soccer Sisters Festival was an idea based on promoting the game in a comfortable, family friendly environment. Promotion became an essential tool to getting the message out to the target audience.
With 3 November, 2012 locked in as the date for the first festival there was some apprehension over whether enough had been done to promote the event, but any concerns were premature as 110 young football-loving girls turned up to give the sport a go.
Saveaalii says for the organisers it was a huge surprise to see there was so much interest in football given the lack of turnout for the proposed league.
A date for the second festival was soon lined up, 24 November, 2012, but this time just 90 participants turned up. Saveaalii says this caused concern and prompted staff to investigate how they could get the number of girls attending back up.
As Faaiuaso is also the Just Play project manager, the team were able to take advantage of a break in Just Play activities to enter schools and promote the festival amongst students.
“Most people in the past wouldn’t have known what a festival entailed. But now that Just Play has been introduced to Samoa and is going well people now know what the Soccer Sisters Festival would be like,” she says.
On the back of some savvy promotion and marketing the third Soccer Sisters was held on 22 February, 2013 and a record 168 girls participated.
The success of the festivals meant the federation had a strong base of young, interested players from which they could now begin a league. However instead of getting one league underway, they were able to introduce two – a U-15 and U-12.
The league recently wrapped up and from that four representative teams will be selected and Samoa now has a strong base from which it can begin identifying and developing talent to represent the national side.

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