PFA's Pre-Season Camp for Women Players: A Lifeline

Every July, the same pictures flood timelines. Players in new kits. First-day-back photos. Laughter in the gym. Running drills under a grey English sky that somehow always looks like football.

For those still without a contract, those images sting.

“They’d had positive seasons or had come back from injury, but then they started seeing players returning to clubs and that’s when their minds started racing,” said Victoria Williams, Head of Women’s Football at the Professional Footballers’ Association and former Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion defender.

This summer, the PFA decided that moment needed an answer.

So, for the first time, England’s players left out of the pre-season picture were given a frame of their own.

A camp built for the in-between

Across the weeks beginning 15 and 22 July, the PFA ran its first dedicated pre-season camp for out-of-contract Women’s Super League and Women’s Super League 2 players. No badge on the chest. No club crest on the training gear. But everything else screamed elite.

Daily football sessions. Structured gym work. Access to the PFA’s wellbeing, personal development and business school teams. A professional club environment, without the club.

“The intention has always been to run a women’s camp alongside the men’s,” Williams said. “Now that WSL2 is fully professional, we’re seeing more players who genuinely want to build a career in football. If they’re out of contract, especially in WSL2, dropping into tier three isn’t always straightforward because of the differences in professional conditions.

“As the game continues to grow, the need for this type of support is only going to increase.”

The timing is no accident. With the professionalisation of WSL2 ahead of the 2025/26 season, the PFA has expanded its membership across the top two tiers. More female players than ever now sit under the union’s umbrella, and crucially, that support doesn’t disappear when the fixtures stop.

This camp is the practical expression of that shift. Not a holding pen. A launchpad.

More than just staying fit

Williams is clear about one misconception.

“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. “They’re there so players can train in an elite environment while having the time and space to make the best decision for themselves.

“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 difference was immediate. The camp didn’t feel like a stopgap. It felt like being back where she belonged.

“The facilities are top. Everything is professional. It’s all run very smoothly,” Smith said.

“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.”

That phrase – “hit the ground running” – is exactly the point. This isn’t players clinging on to fitness. It’s players sharpening themselves for the right opportunity, not just the first one.

Yet for many, the biggest shift was emotional, not physical.

“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.

“It’s exactly what we hear from the men’s camps as well. 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’.”

Pressure, uncertainty – and a place to breathe

The rise of professionalism in the women’s game has brought higher standards, better contracts and increased visibility. It has also intensified the stress of the in-between.

“There can be financial pressure, personal circumstances and the feeling that time is running out,” Williams said. “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.”

Training alone, day after day, with no clarity about what comes next, can drain even the most resilient.

“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. “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.”

The camp, then, becomes more than cones and rondos. It’s structure. It’s routine. It’s a dressing room, a shared joke, a nod of recognition across the gym floor. It’s the feeling that your career is still moving, even if the contract isn’t signed yet.

A first step that already matters

For a pilot project, the impact has been immediate. The inaugural camp has already produced tangible results, with players receiving multiple offers before the two weeks had even finished.

The PFA is already taking notes for year two. Feedback from this first group is shaping plans to start earlier in the summer and, in time, to introduce friendly matches – mirroring the long-established men’s programme and adding that final layer of match sharpness.

“We want this to become a staple of the summer calendar,” Williams said. “Provided players want it, we’ll always put it on. We’ve learned a huge amount from this first year and now it’s about making next year’s camp even bigger and better.”

If that happens, it will be because of the players who took a chance on something untested.

“I really credit the bravery of the players who attended,” Williams said. “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’.”

The women’s game in England is accelerating fast. Investment is rising, international talent keeps arriving, and competition for places grows sharper every season. In that kind of landscape, what happens to players in the gaps between contracts will say as much about the maturity of the sport as what happens under the floodlights on a Sunday.

This summer, the PFA quietly built a bridge over one of those gaps. The real question now is how many players will choose to cross it next year.