Formby's inspirational Tina Hamilton is presented with the Women's FA Cup

Tina Hamilton, the Secretary of the Girls’ Football Section, who has been very actively involved with Girls’ football at Formby Junior Sports Club for six years, received a fantastic surprise at the weekend when the Football Association together with sponsors SSE announced the wonderful news.

FJSC has been involved in a number of FA initiatives for quite some time. One of which has been the Wildcats Scheme for girls between 5 and 11 years of age. When Tina saw the motto for the scheme –“have fun, make friends, play football” with the club’s blessing, she applied for FJSC to become a Wildcat Centre for Girls’ football. It really meant just carry on delivering football in the way FJSC has done so for its entire 59-year history, including the last 20 years for girls’ football, but now with the extra support from the Football Association.

The Liverpool FA were so delighted with the efforts that FJSC had been making with the Wildcats Scheme under Tina Hamilton, the FA came along to Deansgate Lane Playing Fields on Saturday to film the girls from FJSC taking part in coaching and games on a typical Saturday morning at Inter Club. The morning was thrilling enough for the hundred girls in attendance but went into an even higher level of excitement when a very dazzling object in the sunlight seemed to appear from nowhere. It was immediately recognised as the Women’s FA Cup. To her surprise Tina was presented with the FA Cup and it was also announced that she had been nominated by Anna Farrell, Liverpool County FA Development Officer to present the FA Cup at Wembley next Saturday.

The news then became even better for Tina and Formby Junior Sports Club when it was announced that to present the Women’s FA Cup on Saturday 5th May to the winning team would be no other than Tina Hamilton of Formby Junior Sports Club and a leading light in the SSE and FA Wildcats Scheme. The match will be televised next Saturday afternoon at 5.30pm and of course you will also be able to see Tina present the FA Cup to either Arsenal or Chelsea.

All the FJSC girls had photographs taken with the FA Cup before going on to play their Inter Club games of football to complete a quite memorable morning.

We hope this extra special news this week will encourage even more girls to give football a try at Formby Junior Sports Club and also attend the club’s Wildcats Centre from 10.15 to 12 noon. There are three more Saturdays left this season at Deansgate Lane on 5th, 12th and 19th May.

FJSC is the biggest club for Girls’ football on Merseyside offering football for all girls from 5 to 17 years of age. There is an Inter Club Section for girls from 5 to 15 and FJSC also has twelve Representative teams playing in local leagues.

Frank O'Rourke started the Girls’ Section twenty years ago and over that time although it has had its ups and downs, through perseverance and hard work it has become a very important part of FJSC’s organisation. One third of the club’s total membership is now girls. There are at the present time over 170 girls playing football at FJSC every weekend.