1. Rachel Doody came back from International duties with a major injury. She was basically unavailable for most of the League season.
2. Jill Gilmour, a previously retired International and Premier player was reintroduced to the squad to help make up the numbers.
3. Amanda Crawford was similarly brought back for critical games.
4. Some players who had participated in the squad training throughout the year were used sparingly.
5. Numbers at Premier training were sometimes very low.
6. Very few of the Reserve squad made meaningful contributions to the first team effort.
7. We failed to provide the Premier side with a full time Manager and the Reserve coach had minimal interaction with the first team.
8. We had the shock retirement of our top Goalkeeper at Senior Prize giving and we have few, if any, plans for a replacement.

With these issues in mind we decided to implement a plan that we had been developing over quite some time to try and address the issues for the long term benefit of Senior Women's Football at Lynn Avon United.

Background
The whole concept of the Premier Women at our club was as a result of some discussions in mid 1992 about what was required to mount a serious challenge to the Premier League. A group of us, including players at that time, drew up a short list of things we'd like to achieve and steps we'd need to take in order to make that dream a reality.

A lot of hard work has been put into the development of the team into its current position but, in reality despite outstanding success over the last 10 years, we've done very little to future proof our vision looking ahead to the next 10 years.

We've certainly always tried to attract top coaches to the team, and have successfully held on to a number of NZ International Coaches and Federation Coaches over that time, and tried to provide as good an atmosphere as possible for the players to develop within, but we've never sat down and reassessed our strategy to continue to perform and produce top players and win championships.

In all honesty this has been left up to the coach selected and the players provided. While this has been successful to a point we seem to have reached a position where we've stopped producing top class young talent and now when players have left us for whatever reason we've struggled to put developing players into the mix.

This has become especially relevant to us with the shock retirement of Yvonne, and the earlier retirements of Jabba, Mellissa, Lynn and Jill, and the very real threat of our young ones signing with American Colleges.

What We're Doing About It
The Women's management group at the club has been meeting for the last 14 months and been working towards the development of a formalised vision for our team going forward for the next five to ten years.

We've set ourselves specific targets in the areas of development and performance measurement and the broad outline has been approved as the best way forward from here.

For the 2004 season and beyond we've decided on a very responsible and dedicated process and team to help us achieve our vision. The first team coaching and management structure will set the standard for all women's teams at the club and will develop the best plans possible in order for us to continue to hold the position we've achieved.

First Team Management Structure
Coach: J. Gilmour
Assistant Coach: D. Gilmour
Full time Manager: K. Phipps

First Team Process

• Head Coach to control and have input into the training and squad selection of the Reserves.
• First Team and Reserves to train at the same venue and on the same night.
• Reserve team coach to work closely with and be accountable to the First team Coach.
• First Team playing lists to be published on a Thursday night in the Clubrooms.
• Key Performance Indicators to be instituted for all positions. (Where applicable Representative and or National duties to be combined into KPI.)
• Targets to be agreed and measured against for player retention, development and recruitment.
• Formal process developed to include reserves in First team environment and games where practical. This is seen as a must to ensure that players required to step up are much more familiar with the role required of them.

Overall these are the categories that we believe will, once implemented, move us down the right development path. We will open up opportunities for a far greater number of up and coming players to participate in and start to understand about the level of commitment required to be one of Lynn Avon's, Federation 2's and ultimately New Zealand's best.

We feel, that as the ultimate custodians of the Foremost Premier Women's side in the country, that these processes and standards must be achieved in order to maintain and even improve on our current dominant position and to continue to set the standards in developing the Women's game in this country.