PFA Camp Supports Out-of-Contract WSL Players in Pre-Season

Every July, the same pictures roll across timelines. Squads jogging back through training-ground gates. New signings posing with fresh shirts. Pre-season testing, rondos, the first sharp tackles of the summer.

For players without a club, those images land very differently.

“Every player I spoke to mentioned that moment,” said Victoria Williams, Head of Women’s Football at the Professional Footballers’ Association and former defender for Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion. “They’d had positive seasons or had come back from injury, but then they started seeing players returning to clubs and that’s when their minds started racing.”

This summer, the PFA decided those players would not be left to wrestle with that feeling alone.

A camp built for the game’s in-between days

Across the weeks beginning 15 and 22 July, the PFA staged its first dedicated pre-season training camp for out-of-contract Women’s Super League and Women’s Super League 2 players. It was more than a stopgap. It was a statement about where the women’s game now stands in England.

The timing is no accident. Investment is rising, standards are climbing and the English leagues have become a magnet for international talent. With WSL2 fully professional ahead of the 2025/26 season, the margins are tighter, the competition fiercer, and the consequences of being without a club more stark.

The PFA has responded by expanding membership across the top two tiers, bringing more women than ever under its umbrella. Crucially, that support now stretches into the most fragile period of a player’s year: the off-season, when contracts end, phones go quiet and doubt creeps in.

“The intention has always been to run a women’s camp alongside the men’s,” Williams said. “Now that WSL2 is fully professional, we’re seeing more players who genuinely want to build a career in football. If they’re out of contract, especially in WSL2, dropping into tier three isn’t always straightforward because of the differences in professional conditions.

“As the game continues to grow, the need for this type of support is only going to increase.”

Elite standards, real support

This was not a holding pen for the unwanted. The PFA set out to mirror a top-level club environment: daily football sessions, structured gym work, and access to specialist staff covering wellbeing, personal development and business skills.

“I think people sometimes see these camps as somewhere players go because they haven’t got a club, but it’s not like that,” Williams said. “They’re there so players can train in an elite environment while having the time and space to make the best decision for themselves.

“If we can provide a pre-season environment that matches the standards they’d experience at a club, they don’t have to rush into a move simply because they feel they’re falling behind.”

For former Nottingham Forest striker Libby Smith, that level of detail cut through the noise of an uncertain summer.

“The facilities are top. Everything is professional. It’s all run very smoothly,” Smith said.

“It makes a massive difference. It keeps motivation high and helps you get through the sessions. Being here has kept my fitness high and allowed me to work on the individual things I wanted to improve.

“The coaches have been brilliant, asking if there's anything specific I wanted help with. It will help me hit the ground running when I join a new club.”

The technical work matters. So does the conditioning. But the players kept coming back to something more basic: belonging.

“There is that moment in summer where they think, ‘Thank goodness I've got somewhere to get in the car and go to and be around players’,” Williams said.

“It’s exactly what we hear from the men’s camps as well. It’s a genuine feeling of, ‘I've got a purpose and somewhere to go where I feel supported and I’ve got a bit of autonomy over my future’.”

Pressure, doubt and the value of a routine

The more professional the women’s game becomes, the harsher the edges between contracts can feel. Salaries may be rising, but so are expectations and the fear of slipping out of the system.

“There can be financial pressure, personal circumstances and the feeling that time is running out,” Williams said. “When teams start going back into pre-season and you still don’t know what’s next, it can be a very unsettling time. We want players to know they’re not on their own.”

That is why the camp tried to do more than simply keep legs ticking over. It recreated the daily rhythm players crave: wake up, train, recover, plan, repeat. A structure that pushes back against the anxiety of the unknown.

“When you’re training on your own and you don’t know what the future holds, that takes a lot out of you,” Williams said. “If we can recreate that club environment, remind players what they’re capable of and help them walk away confident in their ability and knowing people believe in them, then that’s a huge success.”

The impact showed quickly. Players arrived wary, some still processing releases or injuries. They left fitter, sharper and, crucially, with options.

Laying foundations for a new summer staple

The inaugural camp has already delivered tangible returns. Before the final sessions wrapped, several players had received multiple offers. Agents and clubs had seen enough: fitness maintained, sharpness intact, mentality clear.

Inside the PFA, the first reviews are already shaping what comes next. Players want more. An earlier start date is on the table. So are friendly matches, to bring it closer to the long-established men’s programme and give scouts another reason to watch.

“We want this to become a staple of the summer calendar,” Williams said. “Provided players want it, we’ll always put it on. We’ve learned a huge amount from this first year and now it’s about making next year’s camp even bigger and better.”

If that happens, credit will sit with those who took the first step into the unknown.

“I really credit the bravery of the players who attended,” Williams said. “They didn't know what this was going to look like. There wasn’t a previous camp they could look at and there were no women who had done it before.

“The players turned up, worked incredibly hard and got so much out of it. Hopefully, next year more players will look at this and think, ‘Maybe I should register too’.”

The women’s game in England is racing forward. Contracts will be won and lost at ever greater speed. The question now is simple: in a landscape this competitive, can any serious league afford not to give its out-of-contract players somewhere like this to stand, train and believe?