Girls football has been growing and developing at a rapid pace within British sport for a number of years, and here at Reading FC we are proud to operate a girls coaching programme, with our successful Centre of Excellence being the focal point of these activities.

We currently operate four Centre of Excellence girls teams, starting with the under 10s and also including under 12s, under 14s and under 16s.

The girls within our Centre of Excellence are selected from local teams, schools or our own club trials. We hold evening training sessions twice a week, with a strong emphasis on improving the girls' technical and athletic ability, as well as football understanding.

The four teams also take part in the Amateur Football Alliance Games programme, which involves matches every Saturday against the likes of Arsenal, Fulham, Chelsea, Southampton, Millwall, Charlton and Watford and other southern professional clubs who have Centres of Excellence for girls.

We also work closely with the Football Association on the development and identification of young talent, and we are delighted that two of our players - Kayleigh Hines and Melissa Fletcher who are currently in the England under 17 and 15 squads respectively. We hope that more budding stars from our Centre of Excellence will be following in their footsteps before too long.

The centre also has its own medical team who provide fantastic care for our injured players and those on rehabilitation programmes.

Our centre has really grown from strength to strength and this growth has been rewarded by some fantastic silverware in the form of the Regio Haarlem Cup and the Welsh International trophy in the past 2 seasons and we hope that this success can be built on season by season.

In addition to the Centre of Excellence, this season we will be actively increasing our girls-only programme of soccer courses.

With initiatives such as the girls-only After School Clubs, holiday Soccer Schools and girls Development Centres, we will be able to boast a thorough programme of girls football within our set-up.

This will help in developing grass roots girls' football at a local level, get more girls involved in football and hopefully identify and develop more outstanding future talent for our Centre of Excellence!

If you would like to become involved our in girls football activities, or you would like your school to have a girls-only programme, want your girls club to work with us or even if you would like to see if you'd be able to gain a place in our Centre of Excellence, please give the office a call on 0118 968 1415 or email community@readingfc.co.uk