I can hold my own with my brothers. I know just how to push Gary’s buttons
HOW TRACEY BECAME THE FIRST NEVILLE TO MANAGE ENGLAND
TRACEY NEVILLE would say she has never lived in the shadow of her footballing brothers.
She might not have enjoyed their fame or their financial success. At the peak of her career as an England netball player who won bronze medals at the Commonwealth Games and World Cup, she earned just £742 a month. But there has been no shortage of ambition and no lack of personality.
She is Phil Neville’s twin and I ask her which of them, back on January 21, 1977, emerged first. ‘I don’t think there was ever any way Philip was coming out before me,’ she says in a broad Bury accent enriched by an endearing burst of laughter.
It might explain why it is Tracey who has risen to the rank of national head coach first, taking England’s netball team to this summer’s World Cup in Australia while her brothers continue to combine coaching and broadcasting.
Gary has spent the past three years as assistant to England manager Roy Hodgson. Tracey was parachuted into the top job on an interim basis last month and will select a squad of 12 for the tournament in August.
Winning it will be no easy task, even if England are ranked third in the world. They failed to win a medal in last year’s Commonwealth Games and poor results in a recent Test series convinced netball chiefs to turn to 38-year-old Neville, who has performed impressively as the boss at Manchester Thunder.
How England perform will impact on funding with up to £4million at stake. The pressure is on.
She revived an ageing Thunder team with an injection of youth and has secured two Superleague titles in three years. They are top of the league and later this month will contest their Superleague semi-final at the Manchester Arena, with some suggesting there are echoes of a certain local football team.
Like Gary and Phil, she was first capped for her country at 19, eventually making 81 international appearances before a knee injury forced her to retire — and she says her personality is probably a mixture of the brothers’.
‘I think we’re all natural leaders,’ she says as she tucks into a cooked breakfast at Hotel Football, which stands next to Old Trafford andd counts her brothers and Manches-ter United’s other ‘ Class of 92’’ players among its main investors.
‘I’d say I’m quite intense, likee Gary. He and I would clash quite a lot. Not to the detriment of our relationship. We’re very close. Butt Philip would be the mediator.’
So Phil’s the nice one? ‘I think I am,’ she says, chuckling again. ‘I’m probably not as intense as Gary and I’m not the mediator that Philip is. I’m somewhere in the middle. I have bits of both personality traits.
‘But I can definitely hold my own with the two of them. I’m probably the one who winds Gary up, to be honest. Being a girl I probably know how to push his buttons.’
She says she was never dazzled by the success her brothers enjoyed at United or by the fact that Gary’s best mate was David Beckham. ‘I knew them all when they were earning £29.50 a week in digs,’ she says.
And she claims never to have been the sister her brothers turned to for fashion or girlfriend advice. ‘We never had those kind of conversations,’ she says.
‘And Gary and clothes? I don’t think they are ever in the same conversation really (cue more laughter).
‘But we have an awesome dynamic. We obviously all have a competitive edge but not to the detriment of each other. As kids we were like a pack of cubs. We always looked after our own and that’s still the case today. We rely on that support system.’
Even as kids, her brothers treated her as an equal. ‘I was never a girl they put in the field when we played cricket or in goal when we played football,’ she says. ‘I was always pretty good at all sports and I would give it my all.
‘ I would have been a good footballer. I loved playing. My mum was the footballer in the family. She played as a striker. That didn’t rub off because like Gary and Phil I was a defender. In the end the big decision I had to make was between hockey and netball. I’d made some good friends in netball so that was the option I took.’
Understandably, there is what she describes as ‘a certain connection’ with Phil. ‘We probably speak more,’ she says. ‘Because Gary’s so busy I would see more of his family, his kids, than I do him.
‘He never talks about himself. He won the award last week (best sports presenter at the RTS Awards) and nobody in the family even knew he was up for it. He wouldn’t say he wantsw to be the next England managerag because his focus will be on the jobjo he’s doing at the moment. And when I told Gary I’d got this job, it was just a one-word text response. “Brilliant,” he said. There was more fromfr Philip. “Unbelievable. So proud.”pr I think he tweeted something.th That’s the difference.’
Before Australia she will draw on the experience of both brothers. Phil spent a season as assistant coach to David Moyes at Manchester United. Given the opportunity she would also like to pick the brains of Sir Alex Ferguson.
‘If he wouldn’t mind having a coffee with me I’d love to do that,’ she says. ‘But I’ve got 30 minutes booked in with Gary.
‘There are certain challenges in our sport. It’s difficult for the girls to be full-time, and often their jobs become more important because there isn’t the financial support.
‘I had some difficult financial times as a player. I had great support from my family but I had to take different jobs to support myself.
‘I worked in hospitality and got into coaching education and I studied too. I got a maths degree in Bristol before studying for a sports science degree in Chester. These days I’m working with girls who are doctors, lawyers, zoologists.
‘But I think I’m a better coach than I ever was a player. One of my strengths is the integration of young players and the way I build a team around a certain ethos. I also have a good understanding of the game.’
The challenge is nevertheless significant, as Australia and New Zealand are the powerhouses in netball.
‘The Sport England target is to get to the final but we’ve never made a final before,’ she says. ‘Last year we finished fourth in the Commonwealths. The team didn’t perform to their best so it’s my job to get them doing that.
‘Ideally I’d like to have had longer to prepare. In a perfect world you’d get a four-year cycle.
‘Right now the future beyond the World Cup is uncertain. We’ll just have to see how it goes. But I had to take this opportunity. I’ve always had such passion for England.’ She’s certainly not alone there. Information on Manchester Thunder’s semi-final at the Manchester Arena is at www.manchesterthunder.com
I would have been a good footballer, I loved playing Phil texted ‘so proud’ when I got the job