COLCHESTER United’s brand new women’s team play their first-ever game, this weekend.

And head coach Luke Worley says they are raring to go, ahead of the new Essex County Women’s Football League division two campaign.

Colchester’s women’s team has relaunched this summer, following a ten-year absence.

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For the past 18 months, Colchester United Community Foundation (CUCF) have been driving to create a sustainable pathway for all women and girls within the community.

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The result is a new U’s women’s team, who are now ready to play their first game against Chelmsford City at Melbourne Park on Sunday, kick-off 2pm.

Worley said: “It’s the culmination of months and months of work – getting the women’s team up and running has been around 18 months to two years in the making.

“It’s all culminated in this weekend, firstly being present at the men’s game where a selection of us will be there on their day and then the game at Chelmsford, on Sunday.

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“Unfortunately, our first game is an away game – we’d have liked it to have been a home game just to launch it but we’re looking forward to it.

“We’ve pitted ourselves against higher opposition in pre-season, for all of our games.

“We’ve played Leyton Orient who play in the Greater London premier division and we’ve also played two Suffolk premier division teams and then this weekend just gone played an Essex premier division team, who have just got promoted from division one.

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“We lost two of those games, drew one and won one – one of the losses was actually very close where there were a couple of individual mistakes, as to be expected with a new team.

“But it’s been really, really good overall.”

Colchester United Women is the culmination of thriving numbers throughout their Wildcats, Girls Development Centre, Emerging Talent Centre and Female College Programme, driven by the CUCF.

Worley says they have a good mixture now of youth and experience, within their squad.

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“In terms of recruitment, the ground work was done before I was actually appointed,” said Worley, who spent five and a half years coaching in the United States before returning to England nearly ten years ago.

“I actually officially started at the start of August in the position.

“Trials were held and I think they had around about 50 female registrations for the team originally and then they whittled it down over a number of weeks and then offered out 17 places overall.

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“We’ve set a precedence that we will only take 21 places in our first year to allow us to build a cohesion but also, we wanted some of our players to come from within.

“So within our development pathway and college programme, we’ve been able to offer places to some of those players.

“We’ve probably got an average age of 18 or 19 before we added four more players on top of that, who are 30-plus.

“It’s added some experience to help mentor the younger ones and guide them.

“At the time, our experienced players were about 21 or 22, so we’ve added a few more to that, which is fantastic.”