Girls Dream Team Circuit (GDT) FC won the hearts of many teams competing in the Milo 16th Royal Selangor Club (RSC) Under-12 International Football 7s at the Bukit Kiara Annexe which ended yesterday evening (Sunday),
Not because they were among the two all-girls teams in the tournament – the other being – Supergirls Subang Jaya – but because they had a story behind their team which spoke volume of parents’ involvement to promote girls playing football.
GDT, a Singapore based team from the Southern part of Singapore near Geylang, was formed in 2015, after a group of girls from the area of Circuit were interested to play football.
Zamri Abdullah, a Grab driver whose daughter, Dhaniyah Qasimah, was one of the girls in the neighbourhood who keen to play football, took it upon himself, together with his wife, Junainah Hashim, to form a team with the cooperation of other parents whose daughters were also keen to play football.
“Ours is a parent voluntary programme where we are self-funded. We pool our resources and train the girls and compete in tournaments,” said Zamri and Junainah who had brought their team to the RSC tournament for the second consecutive year.
While last year, they played in the Losers Pool group in the second round, this year they made the Cup Group, but failed to make it to the semifinals.
“We have improved and hopefully next year we will go a step further to make the semifinals,” added Zamri.
Junainah said the support from the parents has been overwhelming that they now have girls’ teams for Under-12, U-10, U-14 and U-16 and a boys U-16 team.
“Girls football is not big in Singapore, and we are merely doing our bit to promote it. It is growing, but it can be better, especially in getting support to develop the game in a big scale as there is tremendous potential in Singapore,” said Junainah.
Dhaniyah, 14, herself was glad that her parents were supportive and have given here an opportunity to train and play the game she loves so much.
“Not a day goes by without me playing football,” said the tanned Dhaniyah who plays as a striker.
Indeed, another parents’ initiative to promote football – and this time women’s football – and they should be applauded and given all the support and encouragement.
It is hoped in Malaysia, we will see similar initiative are made at the grassroots level to promote girls football.
Maybe, if there are more girls team, RSC may support to do their part to have a separate girls’ tournament in the near future.
