Hunt fills the hot-seat
IN POSSIBLY the least surprising news of the summer, former assistant manager Gary Hunt has been named Wexford Youths Women’s new boss ahead of the upcoming season. The Waterford native had served as understudy to Will Doyle for the past two seasons.
‘I’m very grateful for what Will Doyle has done (for me),’ stated Hunt. ‘All the experience and knowledge I gained from him was massive and will help me get through this season. Hopefully I’ll be able to fall back on him and pick his brains.’
Hunt has over a decade of experience as a coach, predominantly up through the age groups to adult at his home club, Tramore A.F.C. He also spent time coaching in Connecticut before taking up the assistant’s role under Doyle. He is holder of a UEFA ‘A’ coaching licence.
With the season set to start on August 7, there isn’t much time for the new man in the hot-seat to get acclimatised to his position, with pre-season just around the corner.
‘We are starting back next Sunday (July 3), we have our dinner dance on Friday night so we are starting on a Sunday and we will be all systems go from then on,’ he said.
In the meantime, because last season’s treble-winning season took its toll, with five players out because of ACL injures, recruitment is an immediate goal for the Youths manager.
‘We’re missing a lot of girls through injuries now who won’t play in the short season, so we’ll have to identify some players to recruit, to bring in and have them part of the pre-season programme, so they are not coming in late and having to adjust.
‘The fact that the manager has only been announced in the last couple of days means that we couldn’t go to people. We have our eyes on a couple of players all right so we will try to get the ball rolling on them as soon as we can.’
With the Continental Tyres Women’s National League moving to the summer in 2017, this season will be squashed between August and early December. The clubs will face twelve league games and the FAI Women’s Cup in that spell with the Shield, which Youths hold, and League Cup, put on ice.
As well as that, Wexford Youths will host the UEFA Women’s Champions League at the end of August. The draw took place on Friday and pitted the Ferrycarrig Park club against BIIK-Kazygurt (Kazakhstan), Gintra (Lithuania) and Criuleni (Moldova).
‘It’s interesting, as we drew the Lithuanian team Gintra again, who we beat in the first game last season. Obviously they will be hoping to get one over on us but we’ll be a little bit confident,’ explained Hunt.
‘We drew the lowest top seed team we could, the Kazakhstan champions. Again, they are a top seed so they will be a difficult side, but to get them will give us a little bit of a boost. We’ll be hopeful that we can go and attack all the teams and maybe get into the main competition with a bit of luck.’
Meanwhile, the club has announced that they are set to appoint a financial controller for the women’s side of the club. As well as that, to continue their growth and make the club sustainable, Wexford Youths Women are also planning to appoint a director of football.