South Melbourne Women FC’s recently appointed head coach Alan Davidson will help the club groom a new coach to take over from next season, as part of his role at the club.
Davidson views his return to South as somewhat of a favour for a club he led to the Women’s Premier League championship in 2011, with part of the deal being to seek a future successor.
“I’m sort of fazing myself out of football. I’m involved in football heavily but from a coaching point now I sort of go into other directions,” Davidson said.
“I have a good relationship with the president and a lot of the people at the club and they needed a coach, they sacked the previous coach, nothing to do with me, they asked me if I’d help them out I said I’d help them out.
“The deal is to try and help them groom a coach while I’m here and we’ve identified some players and senior people to maybe groom and hopefully at the end of the season there will be a transition to a new coach.
“If I can do that I’ve done my job. We both understand it’s a short term venture and it’s more of a favour for the club.”
Apart from bringing through coaching talent, Davidson’s task will also be to try and emulate his success in 2011 and win the title with South.
The coach admitted he had spoken to the squad about their ambitions, and was pleased with the outcomes.
“I spoke to the girls about what they wanted and see how serious they were. They were really positive and I expect them to say what said,” he said.
“The only thing is now we got to prepare and do it, but that’s always the target and if can achieve that we’ve had a good season.
“There’s always a lot of pressure though, it’s not easy to go and win a championship. Everyone wants to win the championship. But hopefully, we got the team and we got the players to do it and we’re disciplined enough to get over the line, one step at the time.”