Kelly Simmons OBE was a key figure in the Football Association and the development of women’s football in England during the three decades of her career.

Joining the national body as a regional manager just three months after the 1991 start of the WFA National League, she retired in 2023 after successfully fulfilling her final role as Director of Women’s Professional Game.  

Awarded the OBE for her services to women’s football in 2021, Simmons was not only a highly skilled administrator and driving force in the growth of the women’s game but she was also good enough with her boots on to play in the National League.

After captaining her Warwick University team in the late 1980’s, Simmons turned out for Brighton & Hove Albion in the early days of the league. The Seagulls were a solid Southern Division team, though they often found it tough when coming up against top flight opposition she recalls.

Looking back to her playing days, she says: “I can remember a Cup game against Arsenal when (England striker) Marieanne Spacey kept dancing past me - I don’t think I kicked the ball once in the whole of the match! But even with games like that, I just loved playing.

“And I loved watching teams like Donny Belles and Croydon, teams with players who were amateur but playing to a phenomenal standard with incredible technical ability. I used to think what players like that could have gone on to achieve if they were able to play professionally.”

Simmons can claim credit for kick-starting the road to professional women’s football in England, working within the FA to create a previously non-existent girls’ player pathway which was one of her most important contributions to the expansion of the women’s game. 

And the burgeoning women’s league, taken over by the national body from the Women’s FA in November 1993, helped facilitate the player pathway on a nationwide scale. Simmons says: “Before the League came under the auspices of the FA I don’t think there was any kind of strategic or financial development planning, no real investment in terms of getting girls playing football.

“So my focus was just trying to get girls to play, trying to get schools and clubs to start girls’ teams and in the professional (men’s) clubs to get Centres of Excellence for girls set up through their community programmes.

“The women’s game at that time was almost completely amateur, players were having to pay to play; but in the Women’s Premier League there was the bones of a structure that we could tap into, encourage the formation of junior teams and get the pathway up and running.”      

In 1998 Simmons joined the FAWPL Management Committee and, working alongside FA Technical Director Howard Wilkinson, she was involved in every aspect of the women’s game, from the formulation of The Girls Football Development Plan to the the appointment of Hope Powell as England Head Coach plus the creation of England age group teams. 

The League was growing in strength by this time, but plans announced in 2000 by the then FA Chief Executive Adam Crozier to produce an elite professional women’s league proved ill-fated.

It was not until after Simmons’ 2008 appointment as Head of National Game that the dream of a professional league began moving towards reality. 

The FA Women’s Super League, initially semi-professional, kicked off as a summer competition in 2011 then moved to the traditional September-May format in 2017-18. A year later the league’s clubs began working on a full-time professional basis, sparking what became a massive growth in the popularity of women’s football. 

Simmons recalls: “We knew we had to raise standards. We needed to try and get as many of the players training part-time or full-time, to improve the performance environment with clubs taking responsibility for the youth pathway. 

“We needed them to start to put marketing support in. We had to improve the stadiums that clubs were playing in. We needed better facilities if we were ever going to get a TV deal.

“So it needed a step change in people and investment and facilities. Our feeling was that we couldn’t leave it to grow organically, to sort of dribble along. 

“We had to create something and say, ‘these are the new standards, and if you can meet these standards we're going to completely elevate the women's game in this country.’ And I think that’s exactly what happened.” 

Fuelled in its early years by players who had come through Centres of Excellence and Regional Talent Centres and then honed their skills in the Woman’s Premier League, the WSL was to become one of the world’s very best women’s football leagues.

Meanwhile and also as a result of the player pathways devised and set in motion by Simmons and her FA colleagues, the National League pyramid grew ever stronger to help create a solid structure for the continuing development of the women’s game.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Jan Kruger for The FA/The FA via Getty Images and Simon Mooney/FA Online Photo Library.