NERVE SPORT sat down with the club’s current player-manager Tasha Sibley earlier this season to look back on the club’s first season, as well as looking ahead to the club’ short and the long-term goals.
NERVE SPORT sat down with the club’s current player-manager Tasha Sibley earlier this season to look back on the club’s first season, as well as looking ahead to the club’ short and the long-term goals.
The club narrowly missed out on promotion last season and are well in the fight for promotion this campaign from the Dorset Football League – level on points with this weekend's opponents, Merley Cobham.
Sibley played on and off for Weymouth before it was disbanded over a decade ago and has played for other local teams such as Portland and Dorchester Town. The Terras boss has been heavily involved in the reformation of the new women’s team since 2020.
When asked about why the club wanted to reform, she said: “They wanted something for the girls to aspire to be as they grow up, and have that root for them, so I think it came about from there.”
Looking at the main challenges the club face, Tasha cited recruitment as an issue: “It’s hard to get players in.
“Weymouth is on its own, there’s not that many players that want to travel an hour to train and play matches in the Dorset League.”
Tasha used Weymouth’s FA Cup opponents Sherbourne Town as an example of overcoming this issue.
“Like how Sherbourne have done,” she continued.
“They’ve gone up and they’ve been able to recruit players because they are playing at a higher standard, so fingers crossed hopefully it happens to us too.”
Summarising last season, Tasha said: “We saw the players come together and create a team, so that we can gel well off and on the pitch.
“We only lost one game in the league and due to COVID we only played each other once, which was tricky because we were all so keen and committed to keep playing.”
Looking around the impressive 6,600 capacity stadium, Tasha noted: “During lockdown we were lucky, because people couldn’t watch the men, but they could watch us - we had about 100 then.”
Weymouth’s stadium is certainly impressive for most levels of the women’s game, which gives the club some good infrastructure to build from.
Tasha went on to explain the long-term goals of the club, which she said was “to give a pathway to the youth”.
“We set up a development team because last year we had too many players,” she explained
“As the first team progress to the league above, the development team could go into the Dorset League, so there’s a different pathway for different abilities.”
Tasha ended by giving tribute to everyone involved in the club, and added: “Support for the club has been the best I’ve ever known it.
“I’ve been playing since I was 16 and never known the setup that they have now. There’s so many background people that never get the recognition, but they just want to do their bit for the club because they love the team and the players which is really nice.”