Tracey Neville’s next big step: creating ‘a future in sport’ at Stockport County

“The aspiration for us is to get to WSL2 in three years’ time,” Neville says. “It’s going to be a tough task. [Winning promotion from] Tier 4 and Tier 3 is really, really difficult. We’re going to take over the pathway here as well, so we have now 12 months to really start to build the academy structure around girls’ sport in Stockport.

“My job here is also to make Stockport the place where people want to play football and women want to play football and that’s what I want to get out of this job, that you know in a few years’ time we’re actually bringing through Stockfordians.”

In many ways her position at Stockport feels a world away from Neville’s last jobas head coach at the Melbourne Mavericks netball team. “When I got back from Australia in September, I was a bit low on where to go. I felt that there was nothing in my sporting world at that moment, in netball, that really drove that challenge, really created something that I wanted to move into.

“[Here] I’m absolutely loving it. It’s just a huge role, but a really exciting one as well. I think the real challenge for me was getting on top of all the logistics and administration, the governance. You want to know what’s happening. You don’t want to make mistakes.

“So surrounding myself with people who can give me great advice is really important as well. I’m getting sort of on top. I’m definitely not there yet, but there’s so much for me to learn. But I also feel that I’ve had so much support from the other clubs in the area as well.”

Neville has visited clubs all the way down to tier five, to observe and learn best practises. She hopes Stockport will transition from training once or twice a week to – in a few year’s time – being fully professional. “You can’t build a mountain in one day,” she adds.

“To create careers, and a future for women’s sport, I have a part to play in that. Now, obviously it’s not in netball at the moment, but why can’t that be in any sport? I feel that is my role of this club, is to create a future in sport. To give someone an opportunity or a future to aspire to is something that is really, really important to me.

“I feel as though, if i had grown up now, I probably would have gone into football [rather than netball]. I used to go to every home and away game for Manchester United; It was the only exposure I ever had to sport. And it was only randomly I used to go to an international for netball, I never ever went and watched it apart from if my mum was playing.

Neville adds: ‘I don’t need to know how to coach football, but I need to have a good understanding of the conversations that are going to happen around that.’ Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian

“I still wind people up with the terminology of what I use but now I try and explain stuff but I feel that my job is not to coach – my job is to bring in the best person to be able to do that. But what I can do is I can put around them the best performance environments.

“I probably couldn’t coach the game, but I do know a good player. And there’s different things about them, their behaviours, the way they hold themselves, how they go on the pitch. I don’t need to know how to coach football, but I need to have a good understanding of the conversations that are going to happen around that. And I think that is something that I will challenge myself to be able to do better.”

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email moving.goalposts@theguardian.com.

• This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday**.**