PFA’s Pre-Season Training Camp: A Lifeline for Women Footballers

Pre-season in women’s football has a familiar look. Club media teams fire out photos of fitness tests, new kits and old friendships rekindled on training pitches across the country.

For players without a club, those same images can feel like a countdown clock.

“Every player I spoke to mentioned that moment,” said Victoria Williams, Head of Women’s Football at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA). “They’d had positive seasons or had come back from injury, but then they started seeing players returning to clubs and that’s when their minds started racing.”

This summer, the PFA decided that those players shouldn’t be left to deal with that feeling alone.

Across the weeks commencing 15 and 22 July, the union ran its first dedicated pre-season training camp for out-of-contract Women’s Super League (WSL) and Women’s Super League 2 (WSL2) players. It was a quiet step on the calendar. In reality, it marked a significant shift in how the women’s professional game in England looks after its own.

A camp born from a changing game

The timing is no accident. Women’s football in England is accelerating. Investment is up, standards are higher, and the WSL and WSL2 have become increasingly attractive to international talent. With that growth comes sharper competition for contracts and less margin for error when a deal ends.

The professionalisation of WSL2 ahead of the 2025/26 season pushed the landscape on again. The PFA responded by expanding membership across the top two tiers, bringing more female professionals than ever under its umbrella and extending support into the off-season.

“The intention has always been to run a women’s camp alongside the men’s,” Williams said. Now, with WSL2 fully professional, the need is clear. Players want careers, not short-term stints. Dropping into tier three is no simple safety net when the gap in professional conditions is so stark.

“As the game continues to grow, the need for this type of support is only going to increase,” she said.

The camp answered that need with something players recognise instantly: a proper club environment.

Elite standards, real support

This was no holding pen for footballers waiting on a phone call. The two-week programme was built to mirror the standards of a top-level club.

• Daily football sessions.
• Structured gym work.
• Access to the PFA’s wellbeing, personal development and business school teams.
• A schedule that treated players as professionals, not as hopefuls killing time.

“I think people sometimes see these camps as somewhere players go because they haven’t got a club, but it’s not like that,” Williams said. “They’re there so players can train in an elite environment while having the time and space to make the best decision for themselves.

“If we can provide a pre-season environment that matches the standards they’d experience at a club, they don’t have to rush into a move simply because they feel they’re falling behind.”

For former Nottingham Forest striker Libby Smith, that difference was tangible. At a point in the year when uncertainty can chip away at confidence, the camp gave her something solid.

“The facilities are top. Everything is professional. It’s all run very smoothly,” Smith said.

“It makes a massive difference. It keeps motivation high and helps you get through the sessions. Being here has kept my fitness high and allowed me to work on the individual things I wanted to improve.

“The coaches have been brilliant, asking if there's anything specific I wanted help with. It will help me hit the ground running when I join a new club.”

Fitness, though, was only part of the story.

A place to belong again

For many who turned up, the greatest relief was simpler: somewhere to go.

“There is that moment in summer where they think, ‘Thank goodness I've got somewhere to get in the car and go to and be around players’,” Williams said.

That sentiment echoes what the PFA hears every year from its long-running men’s out-of-contract camps. The structure of a day. The rhythm of training. The small but crucial act of walking into a dressing room and feeling you still belong there.

“It’s a genuine feeling of, ‘I've got a purpose and somewhere to go where I feel supported and I’ve got a bit of autonomy over my future’,” Williams said.

The professionalisation of the women’s game has raised standards, but it has also raised the stakes. Time between contracts can feel brutally exposed.

“There can be financial pressure, personal circumstances and the feeling that time is running out,” Williams said. “When teams start going back into pre-season and you still don’t know what’s next, it can be a very unsettling time. We want players to know they’re not on their own.”

That is why recreating a club environment mattered so much. Not just the cones, the GPS vests or the gym sessions, but the sense of being part of something.

“When you’re training on your own and you don’t know what the future holds, that takes a lot out of you,” Williams said. “If we can recreate that club environment, remind players what they’re capable of and help them walk away confident in their ability and knowing people believe in them, then that’s a huge success.”

Early impact, bigger ambitions

For a first attempt, the signs were encouraging. Players received multiple offers before the camp had even wrapped up. The pitch did its job.

Inside the PFA, feedback is already shaping what comes next. There is talk of starting earlier in the summer. Of building in friendly matches to mirror the men’s programme and give players the match minutes that can turn an interested scout into a firm contract offer.

“We want this to become a staple of the summer calendar,” Williams said. “Provided players want it, we’ll always put it on. We’ve learned a huge amount from this first year and now it’s about making next year’s camp even bigger and better.”

The foundations for that future have been laid by those who took the first step.

“I really credit the bravery of the players who attended,” Williams said. “They didn't know what this was going to look like. There wasn’t a previous camp they could look at and there were no women who had done it before.

“The players turned up, worked incredibly hard and got so much out of it. Hopefully, next year more players will look at this and think, ‘Maybe I should register too’.”

As the women’s game pushes towards full professional maturity, the question is no longer whether players deserve this kind of safety net. It is how quickly the sport can build on it.