New Ferns coach preaches harmony
‘‘I’m a guy who tries to bring people together. I try to work cooperatively.’’
With four words, new Football Ferns coach Tom Sermanni drew a line under a tumultuous period for the team.
‘‘I’m not a dictator,’’ the Scotsman said yesterday, shortly after his appointment was confirmed.
‘‘I’m not someone that screams and shouts, and their tonsils come out of their throat on the sideline. I’m a guy who tries to bring people together. I try to work cooperatively.’’
The distinction between him and the Ferns’ previous coach, Andreas Heraf, known to favour an authoritarian approach, couldn’t be clearer.
He resigned in July, before the completion of a review, allowing New Zealand Football to begin the recruitment process that led to the hiring of Sermanni, who has spent a decade in charge of Australia as well as a little over a year at the helm of the United States.
Sermanni is contracted until the end of next year’s World Cup in France, which the Ferns have to qualify for by winning the Oceania Women’s Nations Cup in New Tom Sermanni, above
Caledonia next month, a task they should accomplish with ease, given they have never lost to a Pacific Island nation.
He will name his squad for that tournament early next week, and
they will gather in Auckland the week after that, ahead of their Nations Cup opener against Tonga on November 19.
When the Ferns come together in Auckland, it will be the beginning of
an eight-month period where they will have two main goals – winning their first game at a World Cup, and making it to the knockout stage for the first time.
Sermanni is familiar with many
of the Ferns, having coached against them on several occasions, and will start his tenure by setting expectations that will underpin the team environment.
‘‘The first thing is I’ve got to
explain to them what I expect from myself and my management team,’’ he said.
‘‘Without going into huge amounts of detail, the key thing I expect from myself and my management team is that we create an environment where players want to turn up every day and play for their team, whether that be a national team or a club team.
‘‘It’s my responsibility primarily and my staff’s responsibility that we create that environment for the players that they want to be part of. That’s the first thing we want to do.
‘‘The second thing is we need to say ‘this is what our expectations are from the players’.
‘‘Our expectation for the players is that they want to come every day, and they want to train every day, and they want to be challenged and they want to improve and they want to play for the team and in this case they want to play for their country.
‘‘Obviously the situation had reached a low ebb and when a situation reaches a crisis point with players saying they don’t want to play, there has to be something wrong within that environment, so it’s important for me now to go in and create an environment where players want to be.’’
During his playing days, Sermanni had a stint in New Zealand’s national league in 1977, making nine appearances for Christchurch United and scoring four goals.