The Canberra Raiders have recently completed their first Valkyrie squads, preparing young female players for the upcoming junior representative season.
Raiders NRLW coach Darrin Borthwick said the squads were created to identify local talent in the club’s footprint and get them in the Raiders’ system.
“We were fortunate enough that we were able to hold under 15s and under 17s trials and start to identify these girls a lot earlier and get them in our system,” Borthwick said.
“To be able to pick 45 in each squad of our best 15, 16 and 17-year-olds was terrific and it just shows what our NRLW team is doing, inspiring younger girls to want to play football and want to play at the highest level.
“The talent that I saw in the six weeks in the academy that we ran was awesome.”
“Where the game has gone, when I first got here a couple of years ago, we’d have a Tarsha Gale Cup trial and there might have been 40 or 50 girls that attended.
“Now for our 15s and 17s we had over 100 girls turn up to trial and the exciting part now is that we’ve identified them. I think we’ll get a similar kind of number coming up in our trials in October and that’s going to make the squads a lot stronger and really start to show the depth that we’ve got in Canberra.”
Borthwick was impressed by the commitment shown from the squads to attend the six week program, with players coming from all over the Raiders’ footprint to be a part of the program.
“We had girls from Wagga, Cooma, Forbes, the South Coast, not only the players to see how excited they were but the parents that sat in the stands each week. I was watching a lot of the parents there that drive the three or four hour journey with their kids to hopefully one day see them play for the Raiders NRLW team, you can see that’s what they’ve driven for.
“The commitment that they’ve shown to bring their kids to training, on a five or six hour round trip, it’s exciting to see.”
Members of the Raiders NRLW squad were in attendance for the final training session on Monday night to help out and inspire the next generation.
“It's good for the younger girls to see our elite players taking the time to come to training and also for our elite girls to see what’s coming through as well.
“A lot of the comments from the girls were ‘look at their skill level’. They are seeing it too which can only add to the excitement of where the women’s game is heading.
“It is hard not to get excited but to see the girls coming through and just the different type of athletes that they are, it’s pretty exciting.”
With junior representative trials approaching in October, Borthwick said it was a good chance to get players together and work on their skills.
“Trials are only six weeks away so it’s perfect timing to just give them a little taste of what they are going to get if they do make the squad.
“That was probably the whole reason we did it too, to start to introduce different skills and stuff so that a lot of these girls that we have identified, we don’t have to spend time with them when we do get them.
“They’ve already got that level of skill and semi elite training that they are going to need. We are already ahead which is terrific.”
