Adam Griffiths is ready for another season at the helm of Manly United in the 2022 National Premier Leagues NSW Men’s competition.
As he continues to build his coaching legacy the former Socceroo will be looking to give the next generation of young footballers their opportunity to reach the higher levels.
Immersing his young talent in a professional environment nurtured by CEO David Mason, Griffiths will give the next generation a taste of men’s football in the hopes that they rise to the challenge and work hard to reach new heights.
“There’s a fine line between bringing players in and giving them opportunity because you never know what they can do,” he explained.
“When I first came through, Graham Arnold gave me an opportunity to play at the old Northern Spirit and that opened up your mind to possibilities as a player and it really pushes you along at a young age.
“I think you can learn a lot as a player by surrounding yourself with really good quality senior players, which is what we’re keeping at the club.
“Our objective is to turn as many of them into professional players as possible, but that requires hard work so we give them a taste and hopefully that they can kick on from there.
“The challenge we have is that by doing that is you tend to lose those players to the A-League academies or A-League teams, but that’s all part of the process and we’re happy to do that.”
One Manly player who has experienced a range of professional football environments is new signing Matt Sim.
Sim, having played with Central Coast Mariners and Western Sydney Wanderers, along with the Newcastle Jets as a youth player, has praised Manly United’s professional set-up and direction as a club.
“They’ve got a coach who’s played at the highest level as well, so everything around the club in terms of the setup that they’ve got there, the culture that they’ve got there was what I was looking for,” he said.
“The setup that they’ve got there now, especially with the new clubhouse and the new physio and medical rooms, is what you’d mirror at a lot of professional clubs.
“Credit to the club to Dave Mason and Steve Felsher as well, the head of the medical side of things, and [Adam] Griffiths the first team coach for pushing these things across the line and getting it there because it makes a massive difference, especially for for taking care of obviously older players like me and keeping us as soon as fit to be on the pitch, but also the flip side is for young players to sort of understand what they need to do day in day out to hopefully reach their goals for whatever level they they aspire to get to.”
With the start of the upcoming season just around the corner, Griffiths has a clear strategy and playing style he is hoping to continue to progress.
“We have a certain playing style that we want to continue to evolve into – it’s a progression,” he explained.
“We started when I first came in, and then we brought in certain players that could continue that and again this year that’s the intent as well, to continue to bring in players that can fit into our playing style, and then hopefully that will translate into the games with high quality technical and attacking football.”
Along with the playing style, Griffiths also has a clear aim for how he would like his players’ mentality to be throughout the competition in order to reach new heights in 2022.
“We want to continue to evolve and have that winning mentality because when you play a style of football you have to also have the mindset to win football matches.
“I think we have to continue to improve in that area, that mental toughness and that desire to win because it’s all good playing a style of football and it looking good but at the end of the day, that winning mentality is key.”
-By Madeline Riley