Glentoran Women’s double clean sweep winning captain Jessica Foy today made football history by signing the first professional contract for a female footballer with a club in Northern Ireland. Jess’ contract represents the start of a process of professionalising Northern Ireland’s most successful squad.
Glentoran Women General Manager Billy Clarke spoke proudly today of this major development: “Glentoran Women are delighted to announce the signing of Jessica Foy on a Professional Player Contract. Jessica is the first female player in the NIFL Women's Premiership to make this move.
For around 15 years when we first competed in the Women’s Champions League, our founding members had the vision of working towards giving our players the opportunity of Professional Player Status. We saw what it was like to be playing teams like Sweden’s Linköping, who had a professional squad full of internationals. We also took away some learning from these competitions. We saw how clubs were funded, sponsored and how their academies were so important to their club development.
In 2011 we took on the task of developing our Girls Academy to where we now have teams from age 7 to age 19. This has been a fantastic development within our club and will require further development in the next few years.
From 2015, we began development of our first team squad with a plan to give some young players their opportunity of first team football and start winning trophies again. The development of the first team has led to unprecedented success.
We are now in a position where we can offer players Professional Contracts and our success and that of our Women’s National team will no doubt bring attention to our players from clubs based in UK.”
Jess said of her historic move: “Firstly, I am honoured to be the first female professional footballer in the domestic NIFL Women's Premiership. Our club has been striving for years to provide more opportunities for girls and women to succeed and to push women’s football further in Northern Ireland. The next step for us was to professionalise women’s football and it is an incredible honour to be a part of that. It is fantastic to see women’s football moving forward, providing a clear pathway for young players to now progress through the academy to professional status. This is history in the making and I am very excited to see what the future holds.”
Glentoran Chairman Stephen Henderson: “This is a truly historic moment in the development and progression of the Women’s game in Northern Ireland generally and at Glentoran in particular. I am delighted that our club is in a position to recognise the hard work, dedication and talent of our women footballers, by not just paying lip service to their professionalism, but by turning into a reality. The game here, pioneered, organised and driven forward by a generation of talented women in playing, coaching and administrative roles, has paved the way for this generation of young talent and those to come, to aspire to become professional footballers in their own country. I can think of no better role model than our captain Jess Foy, to fulfil the iconic role of being the very first female professional footballer playing in Northern Ireland. While Jess is the first to put pen to paper, we are delighted to confirm that our back-to-back clean sweep squad have followed suit. Our management team have built a talented and cohesive squad and we look forward to following their development and hopefully success, both domestically and on the European stage in the years ahead. These contracts reward our players for their dedication and commitment, whilst also providing some protection to our club for their development. In the short to medium term, we can act as a springboard into the full-time professional game in England and Scotland, but taking a longer view, we aspire to offer that opportunity here at the Oval, for both our male and female players.”
