Top team appointed to lead women’s football side

SHETLAND Girls and Women’s Football Club has appointed a four-person management team to lead the squad into the 2025 Orkney Island Games. 

Carrie Morrison, Niall Bristow, Kevin Main and Adam Priest will take charge of the team for the first time against Orkney on Saturday 5 October.

The club said it was “delighted” to appoint the four of them, who will look to “create a legacy of female-led coaching” for Shetland football’s future.

Both Main and Bristow have experience of coaching the Shetland men’s team in inter-county matches previously, while Morrison featured in all of Shetland women’s matches at the 2005 Island Games.

She said she felt women’s football was “taking off again” in the isles.

“Competing in Orkney next July will help get Shetland back on the map for women’s football,” she said.

“Hanging up the football boots as a player was not an easy decision, but this is a fantastic opportunity and has come at the right time I feel to get involved with coaching and start to develop as a coach.

“I believe taking a women’s team to Orkney 2025 will have a positive impact for not only women’s football, but for younger lasses in Shetland.”

Bristow said he had “wonderful personal memories” of Island Games football, having led Shetland’s men to gold in 2005.

He added it was “an honour” to have the chance to help coach the women’s team at next year’s games.

“This is an exciting, new experience for us as a management team and we’d encourage all the players, whether at home or away for whatever reason, to really consider beingpart of what we hope to achieve.

“We want the players to be able to say at the end of their week in Orkney, ‘that was brilliant, I can’t wait for two years to do it again’.”

The 2025 Island Games will take place between 12 and 18 July, with 12 teams taking part in the women’s football competition.