Ahead of the start of the new FGR Women season we spoke to manager Neil Moore who kindly agreed to answer some of our questions. Neil takes charge of his first league fixture away to newly promoted Liskeard on 04 September.

Firstly, welcome to FGR – how have you found your first few weeks as FGR Women’s manager?

Really enjoyed it. I have worked with a few of the players before but everyone has been very welcoming. Had a really good variety of pre seasons fixtures and I think we are in a pretty good place going into the season.

You join following a season as first team goalkeeping coach at Charlton Women in the FA Women’s Championship as well as a lot of experience at other sides. Are you excited to take the reigns as Manager and what sort of team should we expect from a Neil Moore team?

I am looking forward to putting my own stamp on things. I have worked with some great managers/coaches over the years and hopefully I can take the skills I have observed and put them into practice myself. We have all decided as team that we want to have the ball so hopefully it will be exciting, energetic possession-based football.

As we mentioned your previous role was as a goalkeeping coach – is this the position you used to play?

Yes, and still step in at training when needed.

Within your squad there are lot of players with experience of winning promotion or playing at higher level – how important is it to have experience like this in the squad as we look to the season ahead?

It’s great we can have the experience of players like Caitlin Leach who has performed at the highest level. Its a good mixture of experienced players and youngsters with a lot of enthusiasm. Hopefully the more senior players like Katie Jones, Sam Morris and Lucy Johnstone can guide the younger ones when needed during important moments of the game. And we also have very strong leaders like Hattie Jones (capt) and Louise Fensome (vice capt) who can drive the team forward. Its great to have a team who have been very open to learning a new way of playing and taking the messages on board.

We mentioned the experience players, but there are also a lot of exciting young players who came through into the first team last season, often getting us on the edge of our seats with their skill and ability- how exciting is it to work with these types of players and help them develop?

We have the likes of Nynka Rucker, Zoe Boyd and Ameliah Yarwood who are all very exciting to watch and also have great futures ahead of them in the game. They all fit in to the way we want to play and i can see them keeping the fans entertained and having very successful seasons. Nynka also show good leadership qualities too and she will also be a vice captain for this season.

Your first league match is just around the corner now – how has pre-season gone and do you have any targets for the season ahead?

We are confident we can have a good season. We wanted to have a variety of opponents so that we can work on different aspects of our game. The stronger opponents have let us work on our out of possession game while the weaker ones have let us work in possession and lets us see the skills of Estelle Randall and Charlie Rowlands. So, we have had mixed results but learnt a lot about how we are going to play. Hopefully this will put us in good stead for the season.

In the summer the Lionesses made history with their Euros triumph and its expected this will help cause a boom in interest in the women’s game, but there has been talk about needing more coaches to support this. What advice would you give to anyone interested in taking their first steps into coaching?

Get involved. Approach the players with enthusiasm and enjoy it.

Want to watch FGR Women? Their season starts on 04.09.22 and home fixtures are played at Hartpury. You can find their full fixture list here.