Wolves Women make historic move with three contracted players

Anna Morphet, Katie Johnson and Tammi George have become the first women's footballers to sign part-time contracts with the club, making them the first ever salaried female players, in a move Wolves says 'demonstrates the club’s ambition to retain talent and take further steps to progressing its hybrid model'.

This follows the news that saw manager Dan McNamara become the club's first ever full time women's boss.

Head of women and girls football, Jenna Burke-Martin, said: “This is a really important step in supporting our younger players.

"These are three players who have progressed through our development programme at Wolves and that’s not always linear.

"Some of them went out on loan and had different opportunities, but building players to play for the first-team is the directive from the chairman and something we’re really keen on.

“Dan (McNamara) holds his role as player development lead to see the progression and development of players from juniors into seniors, and that transition for us is a really important piece.

“These are players who are desirable for other clubs and being able to offer them a contract to be paid to play football is an exciting step forward for us at Wolves, while also giving them that security of being contracted and employed by the football club to be a footballer – this also protects the club and makes us more competitive.

“In Anna’s case, the contract has enabled her to reduce the hours in her full-time role as a physio outside of Wolves and increase the time she spends within our football programme. We have spoken for quite a long time around the pressures of having a full-time job alongside an increasing football load for female players, so it’s important we get the balance right.”

The three players, who have more than 350 appearances between them for Wolves, are key to the club's future ambitions.

Burke-Martin added: “We’ve had players like Anna Price who played at the club for more than 20 years and this wasn’t an option during her career, so it’s exciting to see the progression of the women’s game and the women’s game at Wolves in terms of moving towards contracting more players that we have here.

“We want to secure the talent that we’re producing and creating at Wolves through our junior pathway to ensure sustainability for the future, and this is the first step of doing that and a progression into it.

“These three players are key ambassadors of Wolves and the type of player on and off the pitch that we want to have here at the club. The women’s game has progressed so much with the way clubs support their players and we have a range of ways we do that – this is start of us taking that next step to contract and secure our players.

“The support from Matt Wild (director of football operations and administration) and the legal team at the club on these contracts and recent loans has ensured that this has been a smooth process.”