Larne Football Club is delighted to announce that our female team will now be known as Larne FC Women, replacing the team’s old name of Larne Ladies FC.
Over the last number of years, the women’s game has enjoyed incredible expansion. Standards in professionalism, coaching and technical and tactical ability of the players have increased exponentially in recent years.
Women’s football has become a major spectator sport and the progress can be seen on our own doorstep, with the Northern Ireland Senior Women’s Team qualifying for the European Championships in England this summer.
As a club, we have aim to play our part in the continuing development of women’s football in Northern Ireland. Our women’s team has a history of success dating back to its inception in 2006. When the club was re-born in 2017, Larne Football Club was committed to ensuring that the women’s team was given support and the necessary resources.
After three consecutive promotions, including two league titles, our women’s team take their place this summer in the NIWFA Championship, Northern Ireland’s second tier. Our ambition is to gain promotion to the Premiership and become an established club at the top level.
To do this, we aim to continue to grow the club further. We aim to attract new players, new supporters and new partners. We aim to inspire and empower everyone from all backgrounds to become involved in the game as a player, a coach or an administrator.
We believe that implementing this name change signifies an important step towards those aims. We also believe that the new name is representative of a modern view on language and equality and is in keeping with the way our governing bodies, supporters, squad and management regard the women’s game.
The Inver Women have been excellent role models and ambassadors for our club, and just like the men’s team have been involved in our community work. This name change further promotes a togetherness between our women’s team and other areas of our club.
The club will only use the name ‘Larne FC Women’ in order to differentiate the side from the men’s team. We will, wherever possible, refer to our women’s team as ‘Larne’ – the same as we do our men’s team. Similarly, our female reserve team will be known as ‘Larne Olympic’ and will only be known as ‘Larne Olympic Women’ to differentiate it from the men’s reserve team.
The club will also no longer use the term ‘ladies’ to describe our female teams, women or girls will be used as appropriate.
Supporting the change, Chairman Gareth Clements said: “Following our partnership with Her Game Too, one of the key action points has been to consider the brand relationship between our men’s and women’s teams. As a club, we firmly believe in the ‘one for all’ mantra and this is a further step towards this idea.
“The success of our women’s team in recent seasons has been fantastic, and we look forward to this rapid progress continuing under the Larne Football Club umbrella.”
