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Pic: Blyth Spartans (Bill Broadley)
After the announcement that Tom Wade has been appointed Director of Football at Morpeth Town, our media team caught up with Tom – via email – to find out how he felt about the challenges ahead.
Here’s what Tom had to say:
How pleased are you to join the club?
I am really looking forward to it; it is a great club with a lot of ambition. Ken and Mark are good friends and it will be great working with them to try to push the club on. On and off the field the club has come a long way over the last five years and the future is very bright
How did this move into the Director of Football role come about?
I had been working for the England C set up for the last two seasons and felt it was time to get back into management.
I missed the day-to-day stuff and the challenge on match days. I had a few offers which I was considering. I went to watch Morpeth vs Grantham and spoke to Ken (Beattie, Chairman) and Mark (Hedley, CEO) and they explained what was happening at the club and a role was coming up that might be of interest to me.
We had various meetings over the last couple of months and I decided to give it a go.
What is your job going to entail?
It will be working with all the teams and giving support when and where required. I will be looking at a pathway from the juniors up to reserve team football, then hopefully on to the first team.
The role will evolve over the next couple of months but I have already had meetings with Dave Jenkinson (17/18s manager) and Nicky (Jewitt) the reserve team manager; it is all positive.
I have spoken to Stephen (Turnbull, Morpeth Town manager) about the role and we are arranging a meeting in the next couple of weeks to go into it in more detail.
How will you support Stephen Turnbull in his management role?
I have been involved in management at this level, Northern League and Northern Conference for 20 plus years and hopefully I can pass on some of my experience to help Stephen, but only if he needs it.
I will be looking at players and doing some match reports for him; it is a supporting role. I know Stephen really well and I am excited to be working with him.
What do you hope to achieve?
We want to be one of the top non-league clubs in the North East. That is on and off the field. But that only happens with hard work; we want people coming to watch the games to enjoy the experience, and that is at any level from juniors up to the first team.
It is important that we have a way of playing that gets people excited and feeling proud of the club.
