The Maitland Saints women's team are holding come-and-try days on Tuesday and Thursday next week.
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The team affectionately known as the Angels are eager to give a prospective players a chance to try out the game at the two fun and skilled based sessions at Max McMahon Oval from 5.30pm-7pm.
Saints club president and former women’s coach Mark Curran will be overseeing the sessions and pre-season training which begins on January 24.
“We will have modified games, basically a lot of fun activities, kicking the footies, maybe some AFL Nines type of games,” Curran said of the come-and-try days.
“It’s just to show girls, who haven’t played the game before, the skills that are required to play the game.
“We’ll have a lot of our girls who have been part of the team at the sessions to introduce prospective players to the team.”
Curran said the women’s team had progressed incredibly well in two years and finals were on the horizon.
“They struggled the first year on-field with only one win, but last season they finished sixth just out of the finals,” he said.
“For a team that probably always didn’t have massive numbers, compared with some of the bigger clubs, they did very well. I’m sure we’ll go a lot further.”
Curran said the expansion of the women’s game had been embraced by all the clubs in the league.
“If you have a look across the league a lot of the clubs are saying so many positive things about the girls adding so much to their clubs,” he said.
“Everyone’s really striving to get a girls team as they have seen the positives when they embrace women’s football.”
The Saints star player Jess Cassidy narrowly missed out on a place in the inaugural AFL Women’s national competition.
Her fellow Sydney Swans Academy member, 17-year-old Jade Bassett is another success story of the club.
“Jade was just 16 when she started last year. She was quite nervous coming into football about whether she could handle it or not. She played a couple of games and absolutely loved it,” Curran said.
“The girls took her on board and made her feel welcome and she has definitely been one of the success stories of the Maitland Saints.”