PSL clubs hold key to professionalising women’s football: Fran Hilton-Smith

Former South African Football Association (Safa) director of women's football Fran Hilton-Smith says the best way to fast-track professionalisation of and better development in women's soccer is through the Premier Soccer League (PSL) and its clubs.

The spotlight on women's football turning professional in the country has again gained momentum after Banyana Banyana’s achievement of reaching the last 16 at the Women’s Fifa World Cup in New Zealand and Australia.

Banyana became the first senior South African national team to progress past a World Cup group stage before being knocked out by Netherlands in the second round with a 2-0 defeat.

They did this despite women’s football in South Africa not being fully professional.

Out of the 16 teams playing in the Safa-run Hollywoodbets Super League, which is not a professional set-up, only three clubs — Mamelodi Sundowns, Royal AM and TS Galaxy — are owned by PSL sides.

The challenges of attracting enough sponsorship, probably amounting to hundreds of millions of rand, to make a women's league fully professional seems a bridge too far for the sport.

Speaking to the media during a Momentum Women in Sport summit in Sandton, former Banyana coach Hilton-Smith said their achievement calls for immediate professionalisation, and said the way to do it would be for relatively wealthy PSL clubs to form women's teams. 

“I think in South Africa the practical thing will be for the women to fall under PSL teams,” said Hilton-Smith. 

“That’s already been mandated by Caf [the Confederation of African Football] and something, when I was on the technical committee [at Safa], I fought a lot for. That's because it just makes it easy for the women’s team because they [PSL clubs] already have the fields, kits, equipment and support. 

“I think if we had proper development structures, school football and sponsors we could win the World Cup, that I have no doubt about.

“Many people didn’t think the girls would get out of the group and to the next round. Getting out of that group is a major achievement. It took us many years to get to this level and now anything is possible.”

Hilton-Smith also encouraged more dialogue in events like this week's Momentum Summit as she believes it a way to workshop ideas on how they can use sport to better sportswomen's lives.

“I think having events like these will empower women in sport and enable them [sports federations] to empower their athletes because we have seen in the past few weeks how successful our athletes can be in many fields such as football, netball and others.

“We have to keep developing our athletes. I used to tell my colleagues when I worked for Fifa that we have the best athletes in the world.

“They used to laugh at me and now I think I’m laughing because we have proven on different stages how good our athletes can be if they are given the opportunities.”

In February the Momentum Proteas reached the final of the of the 2023 T20 Cricket World Cup as hosts, losing against England at Newlands.

The Spar Proteas finished a disappointing sixth at this month's Netball World Cup in Cape Town.