United tie is a fresh twist in Joyce’s story
A PROMISE made to Alex Ferguson kept Warren Joyce at Manchester United despite a barrage of offers from elsewhere.
Two months after finally cutting his ties to join Wigan, he finds he is on his way back to Old Trafford in the FA Cup.
It will be a special moment for the 52-year-old, even if he will shun the spotlight and insist it is all about his players. With Joyce, it has always been about the players.
That was the reason he refused to abandon his work with United’s Under 16s after accepting a role as caretaker player-manager of Hull City, who were adrift at the bottom of the fourth tier.
‘That was bizarre,’ admits Joyce. United were going for the Treble and he was learning from Ferguson’s inner sanctum. At the same time, he was fighting for survival at Hull with a ragged band of journeymen he dubbed his ‘Dirty Dozen’.
‘I didn’t want to let the kids down because they were going for their contracts,’ he said. ‘Hull was totally different. You’re bottom of the league and you know if you take someone out of the League, that’s a blot on your CV before you start.
‘So I just went for the biggest, ugliest fighters I could find. We didn’t really play any football. It was a contrast but it worked.’
Joyce has always been destined for a career as a coach, taking his qualifications in his early twenties, while playing at Preston. He volunteered to help with junior teams at Preston and Bury and captained Hull through an era of off-field turmoil and protest.
He was usually the captain, even as an England Schools rugby union and cricket international, but at 15 he broke his neck on a school tour of Australia. ‘I got speared at the back of the scrum,’ he recalled. The injury re-routed him and he was in Bolton’s first team by the age of 18, eventually moving to the Leeds academy as a coach, where he helped James Milner, Aaron Lennon and Scott Carson step into senior football.
Then came the chance to coach Royal Antwerp as the Belgian club forged a relationship with Manchester United.
‘It was a real steep learning curve,’ said Joyce. ‘If you drew there’d be 600 fans in the car park.’
The offer from Fergie tempted him back to Old Trafford in 2008. ‘The secret of Man United was that everyone was so humble,’ said Joyce. ‘Everyone did their utmost to make sure they did not let the manager down.’
When Joyce rattles through names of international footballers he has helped develop he is close to 50 before he even slows to think.
‘Young players had got in, in the past, but it’s hard when the first team is Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Ronaldo, Scholes, Carrick, Giggs, Rooney and Tevez, and they’re winning the Champions League.
‘To keep developing they need another step. I’ve seen too many lads come through, get in, do well and stop working hard when they drop between the teams. Some lads never had the opportunity. If you can keep them together there’s an X-factor in the bond of being together in a Man United shirt.
‘You say it’s hard to ever do again but if you went out and signed them all and threw them together you could be unstoppable. It would be an interesting project for somebody.’