The glowing reputation of female football in the South East corridor of Melbourne is set to be enhanced after the Dandenong Southern Stingrays announced its initial pre-season training squad for the 2020 NAB League Girls.

The Stingrays have cast their web far and wide to bring together an exciting array of talent that will no doubt deliver some rising stars in the AFLW in years to come.

Stingrays Female Talent Operations Coordinator Matthew Crozier said the task of selecting the squad was enormous, with growing participation numbers translating to an improved standard across the board.

Selecting the squad from three age groups – from 2002 to 2004 – also added some further challenge to an already tough assignment.

“Splitting selection into three age groups certainly made it a very tough process to select 70 players to participate over the summer training block,” Crozier said.

“With the Under-15 V/Line Cup and inaugural Under-16 Melbourne and St Kilda High-Performance Programs running simultaneously this year it gave us a great insight into the talent that is coming through in the younger age groups.

“I’d like to thank all the coaches within these programs as well as the coaches at local level for all their hard work in developing these players to progress to the next level.

“There is some outstanding young talent in the squad that we look forward to working with and developing to help them extract the very best from their potential.”

The squad will be inducted on Saturday October 26 before commencing pre-season training on Monday November 18.

The 2020 Stingrays NAB League Girls Squad is as follows: