Coastal Spirit SAS

Coastal Spirit FC and St Albans Shirley FC Directors of Football, Gary Bennett and Juan Chang, are proud to announce an agreement to combine their Youth and Senior Women’s programmes. Commencing next year, players will compete together under the name ‘Coastal Spirit SAS’ for the 2021 season. The two clubs will also work together to provide a pathway for junior players to progress in to the youth environment.

Both clubs have a passion for the female game and have long been looking to build a sustainable pathway for female footballers. They already have several personnel in common, with Juan Chang also the Head Coach of the Coastal Spirit Women’s Premier League Squad, and Coastal Spirit FC’s Rebecca Lake heading up Girls Development at SASFC alongside Coastal players Britney-Lee Nicholson and Tahlia Herman-Watt, who are working with the junior and youth players at SASFC.

Coastal Spirit FC has dominated the women’s’ game in the region, having won 10 of the 13 Women’s Premier League titles since the club’s formation. Juan has overseen a raft of honours in the last two years, including two Women’s’ Premier League titles, a Reta Fitzpatrick Cup and the retention of the Hawkey Shield. SASFC have been successful in the girls Youth space in recent times, winning the 14th and 18th grade titles over the last three years as well as providing several players to the Canterbury United Pride Development programmes.

With such a strong relationship already established in practice, everyone is excited to begin working towards a female football pathway across the two clubs.

MPL in 2021

Secondly. Next season will see a change in the Men’s Premier space in terms of competition structure. There will be two rounds of MPL action with the top 5 joining 3 from Football South to form the Southern Conference. The top two from there going on to play against the top 2 teams from the Central and Northern Conferences in a National League. This has really got the juices flowing as Ekow and Joe have had the boys in for a few sessions already this month and are really looking forward to 2021. Exciting times ahead!