Former Vice President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Fred Pappoe has encouraged club officials in the Ghana Women’s Premier League (GWPL) to actively engage with the communities within which they are located.

Pappoe explained that football clubs do not exist in isolation and emphasised the major contributions of various communities to the growth of each club.

He urged teams in the GWPL to therefore consider involving themselves with activities that strengthen the bonds they share with their respective communities and fanbase.

“Football clubs are social products, and therefore must identify themselves with their communities by engaging in communal activities,” he said. “This goes a long way to generate love for the club and promotes a civic sense of responsibility among players, and members of the communities.”

Pappoe was speaking to about 60 club officials on ‘Football Club Management’ at the fourth edition of the mentorship program for stakeholders in the GWPL, organised by Betway, the league’s official development partner.

The former GFA Vice President also tasked clubs to strive to attain the highest level of excellence in world football. He pointed out that this could only happen through effective management.

“You must aspire for your clubs to be models of excellence. This means you shouldn’t only strive to make numbers, but also ensure that your teams are unique and set apart from the rest, such that when your names are mentioned anywhere, there’s a certain kind of pride you feel, and an amount of respect attached to the recognition that you receive,” he said.

Other facilitators at the mentorship workshop took the 60 participants through sessions on football club management and governance.

Former fitness coach with South Africa’s Orlando Pirates, Warren Engelbrecht, who lectured participants on Strategic Management, stressed the importance of conducting an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of their respective clubs, in order to develop strategic frameworks best suited for each club.

“Within your club environment, do the hard work by conducting an analysis of your working environment. It is important to look both internally and externally to see where your unique strengths lie and lean onto that,” he admonished.

“It is by understanding this that you can come up with a plan to help you navigate through the environment, and ultimately enable you to set and establish your strategy formulated in a very detailed way.”

On her part, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the South Africa Football Association, Lydia Monyepao admonished clubs to “find out what their end goals are, and work backwards in terms of how they intend to achieve those goals.”

She implored club officials in attendance to “dream big”, because “the success of the club depends on how big its vision is.”

“Your goals should follow the SMART principle, however, – they have to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound,” she said. “So when you draft your goals on paper, you must ensure that they meet these criteria; you have to put the details in,” she noted.

In the last five months, Betway has organized a series of monthly training programmes for GWPL club officials on topics ranging from Marketing & Sponsorship, Nutrition and Sports Science, among others.

Betway is the official development partner of the Ghana Women’s Premier League.