No quality, no intensity and no entertainment. So why exactly did your average nineteen year old guy decide to get involved in such a sport? Here’s the story…
Some people say playing football is all about luck while others say it’s reliant on pure talent and as a fifteen year old boy I was privileged to blessed with neither, but what I did have was a passion to be involved in football in any way possible and an unbelievable drive to make it happen. As a child I always found myself in and out of football, coming across problems with confidence and injury and it was because of this intermittent relationship with playing the beautiful game that I found myself falling behind my peers in terms of ability but instead of giving up I chose a different path.
“You make your own luck. You know what makes a good loser? Practice”
Earnest Hemingway
Instead of giving up on football as others may do I decided to make my own luck and look for opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to me and that’s when I came across my first chance in the game, a volunteer coach at 15 years old with a junior girls team called Hampton. It was nothing glamorous but certainly a foot in the door.
The Big Break
At the end of my first season I got the big chance I had been waiting for, the club folded and one of the managers decided to move to pastures new and set up a team around the corner built for success, and he wanted me as his assistant. ICA Sports was the team, the new kids on the block and finally I had the opportunity to put my knowledge to good use. I had always been an incredibly smart and tactical football player who was great working in a team atmosphere so maybe this would be the recipe for success I had been hoping for.
Risk and Reward
The club started off well finishing near the top of the table and winning a tournament played at the Etihad representing Arsenal as a feeder affiliate and the club pushed me to get my FA coaching qualifications and develop myself as a young coach within the ‘niche’ of women’s football. It was at this point I realised the potential of the women’s game. I was being regarded as a promising young coach, being successful and getting plenty of opportunities in a sport that is growing massively in quality and exposure every year while my friends who still had societies ‘tunnel vision’ on men’s football were struggling to find their way in their post-playing days.
My final season with the club ended spectacularly, winning the league and cup double for the first time, our first major honours as a club so all my risks had paid off. My decision to stay in women’s football had left me turning nineteen with four full seasons as a coach, a league and cup double and to top it all off an unconditional offer to study at UCFB, one of the most well known and respecting footballing universities through an interview based on my coaching alone. My foot is well an truly wedged in the door of the footballing industry thanks to women’s football and it something I would love to continue being involved in as it grows and grows.
The Rise Of Women's Football 