Saints hunting coaches for inaugural female football teams

The club is hoping to field sides in all age groups in the Western Victoria Female Football League but understands filing a senior side may be too big an ask in its first campaign.

Premiership player Damian O'Connor, who is organising the female program, said the Saints had "a good number of girls for the junior ages".

"That's like under 12s, under 15s and under 18s," he told The Standard.

"We do want to at some stage get seniors going, hopefully it's this year but if it's not this year it'll be the next. Our main focus at this stage is getting the juniors because we have got good numbers there."

O'Connor anticipates the club will receive more interest from young netballers, who can now also play football on Sundays after the Hampden league's decision to move all junior netball to Saturday.

The club hasn't appointed any head coaches yet but has received plenty of interest from people, who can't commit to the main roles, looking to be involved with the program as assistants or helpers.

O'Connor outlined what the club was looking for in a prospective coach.

"We're looking for anyone who wants to get into coaching but obviously we'll help them out," he said.

"We don't want to put a raw coach in because girls footy, it's pretty important to have someone who knows the basics to be able to teach. We want to make sure in that position we've got someone who has got a bit of history behind them and obviously knows footy."

The Saints have been running female football sessions throughout the off-season for potential players and have received a positive response.

Before Christmas, the club ran six weeks of training for primary school-aged juniors with around 45 girls attending and an average of 35 per session, according to O'Connor.

He also said the club had 15 to 20 players attend sessions for year sevens to seniors, across a four-week period.

O'Connor highlighted Koroit was well set-up to introduce female teams with the club able to utilise its main football oval at Victoria Park and the neighbouring Jack Keane Oval.

"We're at a bit of an advantage to other teams whereas the other teams use the one ground," he said.

"We think we have a pretty good set-up out there, we've also got changerooms for girls. With the netball courts they've got female changerooms in there, so we are well-suited for girls footy."