Peeps, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the womens team last year, and I'd happily coach women again, but only at an elite level (which sounds snooty, but the higher up you coach, the more organized the leagues are, you get refs appointed at more games, the atmosphere is better, etc).
For instance at the game last night, we travelled to North Star (who are bottom of the table) and played in front of about 200 people, parents, coaches and even other teams who had travelled to see if North Star might be able to get an upset win over us and put their team into the top four instead. Before our warm-up, I was shaking hands with old friends, rivals, and taking stock of familiar faces in the crowd, that sort of thing. The game was an advert for me, for the boys themselves, and for our club.
Contrast that with coaching a womens team. No parents (the girls all drove themselves to games) and, sad to say, no husbands or partners! Very few of the games were watched by any more than ten or fifteen people, and most had no-one in attendance - not even refs. I had to referee two of my own matches last year, and had no-one to run the lines -offsides were judged by eye, and you can imagine the upsets those sometimes caused.
Our home games were no better than our away games as far as atmosphere was concerned - womens games were usually scheduled in the graveyard slots, when the senior mens teams were playing away and all the juniors had gone home for the day. No canteen open, an empty car park and dust blowing over the fields. All that was missing was the tumbleweed.
I loved the experience, it was truly mind blowing. Some of the older women in my side were in their late forties, and they shared a dressing room with four or five girls with supermodel looks. It was surreal watching them gel. It's my experience that women are not mixers, other than in a playgroup or creche where their kids are the catalyst. One or two close friends is it. Men are much more clubbable.
If I was proud of anything at all in 2008, it was that I got a womens team through with more players at the end of the season than we started with - almost unheard of in womens football, where factionalism and internal politics often divides a side well before the end of the year. Our training was well attended, I don't believe I ever had any less than nine on a night, and I was actually asked back to coach this year, but had to decline.
In that sense it doesn't matter where we finished (fifth).
Coaching women is great if you have the gift of the gab and a sense of humour. They listen, they want to learn, and they put something into practice almost immediately on being shown it.
