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End of a lot of hard work - Andy

Women's Football News 28 May 2006

End of a lot of hard work - Andy - 28 May 2006 - Women's Football News

Blackburn Rovers manager Andy McNally created history by becoming the first from outside the National Division to win the Manager of the Year Award.

Andy was rewarded for leading Blackburn to the Northern Division title with an unbeaten record, and promotion to the top flight of women's football for the first time in the club's history. "It's nice as a manager to get an individual award," Andy told Women's Soccer Scene, "but I give a lot of that credit to the players and the backroom staff that helped me achieve it. When you're winning things, the awards seem to keep coming and its nice but it's all the end of a lot of hard work."

Andy also paid tribute to the players who emerged as Champions after a hard battle for the title. "The players have done really well," he says. "I don't think any team can set out to be unbeaten at the beginning of a season, you just try to get a run going but for a lot of the season. We've been looking over our shoulders at Liverpool and Nottingham Forest but we kept our belief and the players remained focused and managed to get a gap at the end to secure it."

Now Andy must turn his thoughts to the challenge of playing National Division football and competing with the best teams in the country. "I've got a plan in my mind of what I want to do and getting to the Premiership completed it, so now what we need to do is draw up another plan for Premiership survival. You have to have short term and long term plans.

"We had a three year plan to threaten to be in the Premiership and weve done it in the quickest possible way really. Last season we came third and I feel that some of this award is for the work we did last season with the amount of players we moved on - and thats difficult - and the ones we brought in from our scouting, so it's been continuous and we havent had time to stop and assess.

"I'm well aware of the record of teams going up to the Premiership and coming down and the top of my planning will be the first season and trying to get a foothold."