Women's and Girl's Officer moves to FA of Wales
Shrewsbury Town in the Community’s Women’s and Girl’s Officer, Pete Wilson, is moving onto a new job with the FA of Wales.
Wilson has been a key part of the Community Department over the last two or three years and has helped massively improve the girl’s game across Shropshire.
“I’m moving to the FAW to work as Under-15 Girls National Team Assistant Manager”, Wilson said.
“I will be assisting the national age group with their fixture programme, the tournaments and then the recruitment of the younger age group players so that we’ve got a continuous stream of Welsh players coming through the system in our regional centres and right through to national level.
“It’s probably a once in a lifetime job, especially at my age. It’s a great opportunity for me and one that I really couldn’t turn down. I’m disappointed to be leaving and to be leaving everything behind, but at the same time I’ve got to see myself through as well.”
Wilson has been at the heart of Shrewsbury Town in the Community’s schemes aimed at girl’s football over the last few years and has worked hard to increase participation numbers in the sport. A number of those schemes are now growing faster than ever and Wilson is proud of the success.
“It was really difficult and it took me a lot of time and discussion with family, friends and colleagues”, said Pete.
“Our Premier League Girls and Wildcats are growing all the time. The Premier League Girls has done very well in the two years that we’ve had it from the Premier League and before that it was the FFD Programme.
“The Wildcats we’ve secure eight more centres for this coming year, which shows how much of the community we are getting out to now and how far we are going to reach, so that is brilliant for girl’s football in Shropshire.
“The RTC programme has gone from strength to strength this year, after our inaugural year last year, and we are seeing success. We’ve now got one player through to Wales Under-15s from our Under-14s and we are always seeing players progress to County level.
“Then we’ve got the Ladies as well and we are doing okay at the minute. We’ve got three wins out of our last four, so we are doing okay and they are in good places with good staff around them to make sure they carry on the success that we’ve already seen.”
Despite leaving his day to day role, Pete will still have a role to play with the elite ladies team and he is excited about their future.
“I will be continuing with the RTC and Ladies to oversee them, almost as a Technical Director”, Wilson said.
“Alex Owens has done fantastically well since taking over in the summer and that’s only going to keep going. We saw Tilly (Chase) play at the weekend who is one of our Under-16s and she’s now gone through from the RTC to the Ladies team, which is fantastic because it shows that the pathway’s there.
“It shows that we’ve got a stream of players ready to go through and Tilly is just the first of them to make that step this year. We had four of them last year, so it’s really positive and with Alex they are in capable hands.”