As part of our sponsorship and partnership with sixth tier Sutton United Women, Impetus founder Ben Gilby spoke to Anthony Murray who will take over the club’s new U21 side for the 2021/22 season. In the piece Anthony discusses his aims for the brand new side he will be putting together over the coming weeks and months.
Anthony has a strong background in London football as he explained: “I’ve had a great career playing youth football for various academies such as Queen’s Park Rangers, Leyton Orient and Charlton Athletic, I played professional football abroad for a season as well as various semi-professional clubs between step one and five. My coaching career started pretty young. While playing academy football, lots of kids on my housing estate around 2004 begged for me to coach them as they wanted to prepare for a tournament and because we went quite far they then went and spoke to the council about getting me onto my FA Level One Coaching Badge. This then saw me coaching at London Tigers FC with their youth development programme and with Westminster Sports Unit.”
This led to Anthony applying for the role of Under 21s manager at Sutton United Women, a club who are making rapid strides up the league system with a record already in their short history of developing a number of hugely talented young players who have come through their ranks into the first team. Not surprisingly, this made the club an attractive proposition for Anthony: “Throughout my playing career, I’ve come across Sutton United many times at Gander Green Lane and it’s always has been a pleasant place to be. Sutton United are a great family and community oriented club and this is what attracted me to be part of the setup. Sutton are all about developing players in house and progressing them up the ranks and that’s what I’m about developing players and giving them opportunities.”
“From the first team down to the youth section the coaches and players are massive on development and giving player opportunities. We aren’t a club with a budget which allows us to go and bring players in so we know we have to go out onto the field to find players and advertise through word of mouth. Sutton United have big ambitions to progress up the tiers and this doesn’t happen unless you have a player pathway from the youth section upwards and putting a RTC and post 16 section in place.”
The club’s current U21s, who will be moving up to U23 level next season with their existing manager Courtney Bartlett and coaching staff have had an exceptionally strong season when they have been allowed to take to the field due to the pandemic – something which Anthony hopes to build on with his own squad when he takes over next season: “Yes, the present U21s have had a great season to date and it would have been amazing to see them continue into the second half of the season to see if they could’ve gone the full distance in winning the league title. Clearly they are a competitive side which can score goals, defend and compete when things get tough games.”
“With bringing a new U21 team together next season, you never know what you’ll get, so it’s about seeing what happens at the trials and then work on the team cohesion. The plan is to develop a team that will continue to enjoy playing football but also develop as people, want to compete and become problem solvers in games ready for the first team.”
We briefly alluded to the impact of the pandemic on the season, so I asked Anthony to talk a bit more about how he is trying to maintain contact with his players: “It’s massively difficult at this moment in time as football up and down the country is suspended in the non-elite game, as well as it being difficult for many families and business being hit by the financial side of lockdown and people’s mental health.”
“With the current crop of players I’m working with, we try to keep in touch with them as much as possible via Zoom and discussing various topics around football especially analysing previous matches, providing training programmes they can do at home and also giving them the opportunity to communicate with the staff one to one whether that be football related or things going on at home.”
Anthony is also desperate for the sport to re-start, but he is using the time constructively at present: “ I’m itching to get started. In the background I’m putting many things in place so we can get firing as quickly as possible. The main priority once the government and the FA give us the green light will be to organise trials as well as travelling to matches within and around the Sutton area to see players in action.”
In terms of Anthony’s aims for himself and the women’s game in the short to medium term, he is extremely optimistic: “I’ve been blessed to be inspired by some great female players growing up such as Eartha Pond, Rachel Yankee and Lois Roche and to see where the women’s game is now is amazing. We’ve had England v USA in the World Cup being the most viewed female international game, various winners in the FAWSL, a massive pool of young talent coming through at every level. To think the women’s game was banned for fifty years and look how far it’s progressed organically with not much of a budget to work with and games being televised. I feel the women’s game will be showing FAWSL games on terrestrial television, increase in funding at grassroots to professional level and both the FA Women’s Championship and tier three clubs being able to have professional status.”
Sutton United are a club well worth keeping a close eye on – and that is something we at Impetus will be doing over the coming months and seasons.
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