New Zealand women's football international Ria Percival is preparing to experience the opportunity of a lifetime. She flies out to the USA on Thursday evening to spend the coming season playing for W-League club FC Indiana on what is, effectively, a six-month trial. The carrot dangling at the end of the stick is well worth the effort, however - the chance to secure a contract playing professional women's football for the Chicago franchise in the Women's Professional Soccer League in 2009. The new league has emerged from the lessons learnt following the demise of the WUSA league, women's soccer's first professional competition in the USA, which was introduced in the aftermath of the US-hosted 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Finals, only to encounter a number of difficulties over the first couple of seasons which made its continuation untenable. The women's game has developed significantly in the ensuing five years, and the USA now considers the time right to re-introduce a professional women's competition, a league which will attract its fair share of the world's foremost female footballers who rarely enjoy the recompense which their talents fully merit. Needless to say, Harwich-born Ria is itching at the chance to be one of the founding playing members of the WPSL, when it kicks off next year. “It should be good”, she says with no little amount of understatement. “The opportunity first came about when FC Indiana's coach, Shek Borkowski, saw me in action for New Zealand at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup Finals in Russia in 2006. “He's kept tabs on me since then, and next had the chance to see me in action during New Zealand's

two-match US tour last year, one of which was a 1-0 loss to FC Indiana. “Playing there offered me the opportunity to see what the set-up was like. The whole experience of being in a different environment greatly appeals to me. I'll be staying with a host family in Indiana, and training daily, twice a day - in effect, a full-time footballer”. Northern Premier Women's League title contenders Lynn-Avon United will greatly miss the services of their talented attacking midfielder, who has made seventeen appearances as a fullback for her country since making her debut in China in November, 2006. It's a country which has featured prominently in Percival's life so far, given she has travelled there three times on football business in the last fifteen months. “It's such a different culture to what I'm used to”, says a young lady who moved from England to New Zealand with her family in 2003. “But China has provided me with the best experience of my football career so far, in the form of last year's Women's World Cup Finals”, grins the eighteen-year-old, who could represent her country at both the Beijing Olympics and the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup Finals in Chile in 2008. “Walking out onto the pitch in Tianjin for the match against the host nation, in front of the biggest crowd of the tournament (55,832 people), and hearing and feeling the atmosphere while standing waiting for the whistle to blow prior to kick-off … that was really good”. As is the chance to play professional women's football, one which Ria Percival is keen to secure after a season playing alongside Italian, Mexican, Nigerian and USA internationals at FC Indiana, the reigning Women's Premier Soccer League champions.