It was Thursday evening and there was no time to waste as we had one session to prepare for a Pittsburgh Riverhounds team managed by Bob Lilley arriving in St. Pete to play on Saturday evening. The short-term objective was simple: to do what we could in the very short space of time to try and win a game of football. The rest could wait until Sunday. To say the next couple of days were like a whirlwind doesn’t do it justice.

While I am sure it was unusual for the players to have their ex-teammate now in charge, they didn’t show it and got straight to business on Friday morning. So did I. I named my first starting lineup that morning and this, of course, meant making decisions not only to leave guys on the bench but also out of the squad completely. When things aren’t going well, every player craves change until some of them see what the change looks like. One of the hardest parts of being a coach in any sport is you can only pick a certain number of people to start a game. You try to be as sincere and as honest as possible with the guys you leave out, but ultimately, they have to deal with it. It’s part of the game. Picking the team over the past two years has thankfully become even harder as the squad has improved, but I know there were a couple of disappointed players that Friday morning already trying to read into what my team selection meant for them in the long term. Two weeks ago, I was someone’s roommate and now I am the a$%&?!e who didn’t pick them. Welcome to the job.

One training session to prepare to win a game of football is almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but we did what we could within training and prior to the game to get the players ready. The first game in charge for any coach could be considered somewhat of a freebie, but I wanted to try and influence some positive change as quickly as possible. It took three minutes for something we worked on the previous day in training to get us a goal ahead. The early stages of the game were so encouraging, and the buzz of seeing a response from the team was one of the reasons why I wanted to get into coaching. Watching a player or team improve at any level due to good preparation and hard work is very satisfying.

I was quite quickly brought back down to earth and given a dose of reality. Twenty-five minutes later, we were 2-1 down. We allowed two calamitous goals and I was starting to see the other side of the job. I now had an idea of just how powerless you can feel on the sidelines. The number of grey hairs on my head have only started increasing in the last two years and I have no doubt it’s games like this that have put them there. I have to make the point that the players that wore the green and gold that night gave absolutely everything they had. Giving 100 percent effort is the minimum I expect from any professional, but the people behind the scenes at the club know just how testing the previous week had been and the players definitely dug that little bit deeper to try and put some pride back in the jersey. We eventually tied the match and only an unbelievable save in the last minute stopped us from a last-gasp win and from turning one point in to all three.

Those first 90 minutes gave me a small taste of what was still to come. My first night being on the sidelines as a coach in a suit and not inside the lines in my boots and shin pads was a learning experience. All of a sudden, I couldn’t use all my pent-up energy to fly in and make a tackle or win a header. Of course, you can influence the game with your tactical changes and substitutions, but nowhere near as much as I had been used to. The technical area might look like a small marked-off box but at times it can make you feel like a caged tiger. The only issue is if we come out of “our cage,” we don’t get shot with a tranquilizer dart we get shown a red card. I think I may prefer the tranquilizer option if they could find one big enough to tame me.

One thing that didn’t surprise me early on was how much more the result affected your mood as a coach than as a player. As a player, it hurts losing and you enjoy winning, but you only carry the responsibility for one person. As a coach, the weight of responsibility and expectations of the whole club are on your shoulders and this can make the highs extremely high and the lows desperately low. People tell you to try and stay in a middle ground whatever the outcome, and I can now tell you that takes real effort plus some very good acting. The emotional roller coaster dictated by wins and losses was not unexpected, but one thing that I did underestimate was the impact my phone would now have on my life. A win can make you deliriously happy and a loss will make you feel bitterly disappointed. That’s what we all signed up for, but what I hadn’t foreseen was how much the shrill ringtone of an iPhone could suddenly affect my emotional wellbeing and derail even the best-laid plans.

On the Sunday morning following my first game in charge, I was just starting to get my feet back under me and my head around the colossal changes that had taken place the previous couple of days. I hadn’t slept and had hardly eaten, but I was feeling a sense of tranquility for the first time since taking the reins when the phone rang. No big deal, right? People’s phones ring all the time. But when you are a coach you just never quite know what is coming when you press that green button to answer. I have quickly found no matter how good you think you might have it, at the end of the other line just might well be a bolt from the blue that can turn your day upside down.

“Hi Neill, how are you? I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about retiring.”

“Amanda, hold those pancakes a minute. WHAT!?”

Until that call, that was a morning of reflecting on the previous night’s game and digesting being the head coach, mixed with thoughts of what am I going to do if I lose my most experienced center back? There was already a hole to fill in on the field as the previous incumbent of that position was me. Instead of enjoying a stack of pancakes, I was thinking about how to pick a lineup without any center backs.