Well sounds like Humphries has been ruled out. But she's got a 3 year deal at the Nix Academy. So what is her wife Priestman going to do in NZ once her coaching ban finishes later this year?
There is only 3 women's coaching jobs in NZ, that would be anywhere worth her while. Football Ferns gig? Nix ALW? New Auckland ALW job?
That's unless she is a shock candidate to replace Chiefy!!
And some interesting comments in that article on the resources and cash the Nix have invested in the ALW team, compared to other A League clubs.
Priestman won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics with Canada in 2021 and would have been unattainable for any A-League Women team before her ban, though Humphries once told Stuff the couple dreamed of returning to New Zealand to coach the Football Ferns one day.
“That’s a quality coach right there,” Gill said. “If that presented itself as an opportunity, we would be silly not to consider it. “But that’s probably a big fish.”
Humphries loomed as an obvious candidate to replace Temple herself, having coached Canada at age-group level and worked as an assistant at Liverpool before returning home to New Zealand to head up the Phoenix academy in December last year.
However, Gill suggested Humphries was settled in her role as Phoenix academy director, having signed a three-year contract five months ago, and they were reluctant to move her.
Temple’s assistants Amy Shepherd and Tory Schiltgen could be other options if the Phoenix decide to promote from within, which they have done for their past two head coach hires.
“Emma is pretty settled in the academy,” Gill said. “She signed a three-year contract and was pretty focussed on that role and what she wanted to do there.
“At the moment I don’t think she has the interest in the A-League Women space and she’s doing incredible work down there [at the academy] at the moment so we don’t want to upset the apple cart there.”
Gill acknowledged the team had made big strides during Temple’s two-year tenure but said the Phoenix have particularly “high” expectations because of the resources the club dedicated to the women’s programme.
Temple is understood to be one of only a few fulltime head coaches in the A-League Women.
“He’s taken them to a place where we have evolved it from where it was the first couple of seasons but ultimately we’ve fallen short of what we wanted to achieve as a football club and it was felt it was time to look at something different and continue that evolution with somebody new,” Gill explained.
“The investment from the owners is significant in the women’s space compared to the men’s space. We operate at a good level of budget for players and staffing. We’ve probably got one of the biggest football departments in the league so there is a high expectation on that programme.”
