PFA's Pre-Season Camp: A Lifeline for Women Footballers
Every July, the same pictures roll across social feeds. Smiling squads back in training. New signings in fresh kits. Cones, rondos, running.
For players without a club, those images don’t signal a fresh start. They sting.
“Every player I spoke to mentioned that moment,” said Victoria Williams, Head of Women’s Football at the Professional Footballers’ Association and former defender with Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion. They had put together strong seasons, some had fought back from injury. Then they watched everyone else report back for pre-season. “That’s when their minds started racing.”
This summer, the PFA decided that limbo needed a structure, a pitch, and a plan.
A camp for the players football forgets
Across the weeks beginning 15 and 22 July, the PFA ran its first dedicated pre-season training camp for out-of-contract players from the Women’s Super League and Women’s Super League 2.
On paper, it sounds simple: two weeks of training. In reality, it is a marker of where the women’s game in England now stands.
The camp offered an elite environment – daily football sessions, gym work, access to the PFA’s wellbeing, personal development and business school teams. It looked and felt like a professional club. That was the point.
“The intention has always been to run a women’s camp alongside the men’s,” Williams said. The timing finally matched the ambition. With WSL2 now fully professional ahead of the 2025/26 season, the PFA has expanded its membership across the top two tiers. More female players than ever can tap into the union’s support, including when they are between contracts.
That shift has changed the stakes. “Now that WSL2 is fully professional, we’re seeing more players who genuinely want to build a career in football,” Williams explained. Dropping down to tier three is no longer a straightforward safety net. The gap in professional conditions is too wide.
“As the game continues to grow, the need for this type of support is only going to increase.”
More than a fitness top-up
This was not a holding pen for those without deals. Williams is blunt about that perception.
“I think people sometimes see these camps as somewhere players go because they haven’t got a club, but it’s not like that,” she said. The aim was sharper: give players a pre-season that matches club standards so they don’t panic into the wrong move.
“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 environment was transformative. Not because it was flashy, but because it felt familiar.
“The facilities are top. Everything is professional. It’s all run very smoothly,” she said. That matters when your future is undecided and confidence can fray quickly.
“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.”
For many, that was the crux. Yes, they stayed sharp. Yes, they worked on details. But the real impact was psychological: they belonged somewhere again.
“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. The feeling echoed what the PFA hears from the men’s equivalent camps every year.
“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’.”
Holding players steady in a volatile market
The women’s game is accelerating. Investment is rising, international talent keeps arriving, and competition for contracts is fiercer than ever. Progress, though, has a harsher edge: the gaps between deals can feel more brutal.
“There can be financial pressure, personal circumstances and the feeling that time is running out,” Williams said. As clubs trickle back into pre-season and squads take shape, those without a badge on their training gear feel the clock louder than anyone.
“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’s why the camp set out to recreate the full club experience, not just the drills.
“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. Isolation chips away at belief. A structured day, a proper session, a dressing room – they give players back a version of themselves they recognise.
“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 rewards and a bigger vision
The impact showed quickly. Before the two-week programme even wrapped, players were receiving multiple offers. The camp had done its job: keep them ready, keep them visible, keep their options open.
Inside the PFA, the focus has already moved to next year. Feedback from this first group is shaping the blueprint. An earlier start is on the table. So is the introduction of friendly matches, bringing the women’s schedule in line with the long-established men’s programme.
“We want this to become a staple of the summer calendar,” Williams said. The condition is simple: if players want it, the PFA will run it. “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 have been laid by those who turned up without knowing exactly what they were walking into.
“I really credit the bravery of the players who attended,” Williams said. There was no archive of success stories to lean on, no previous women’s camp to study. Just an invitation, and a choice.
“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 becomes more professional, it also becomes more ruthless. The PFA’s new camp doesn’t change that reality. It does something just as important: it makes sure that when the pictures of pre-season flood in, the players still waiting for their next move have somewhere to go, a team to train with, and a future they can still shape.
