A trip to a World Cup, an AFF Championship win, 600 appearances in English professional football and plenty more: new APIA Leichhardt head coach Spencer Prior certainly has an extensive footballing CV.
With the 2021 NSW NPL season set to begin on Easter Sunday, we decided to profile a coach that will bring so much to both APIA and the league as a whole. For Prior, it was a relatively simple decision to join APIA.
“The club’s amazing. It’s got the history, which I really respect and love. It’s a good family environment, it’s got a very good SAP program, we’ve got good players in here.”
Despite his wealth of coaching experience both in Australia and overseas, coaching wasn’t part of Prior’s plan until later on in his playing days.
“Coaching was never in my thoughts at the time, it was only really when I got to the last year (of my playing career) that I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m going to look at doing some coaching’.”
Some work with the Academy for his hometown club Southend United followed, but Prior’s coaching career really began to take off after his wife ‘fell in love’ with Australia and the family decided to relocate. While completing his A Licence, a meeting with Tom Sermanni opened the door for a stint with the national team.
“Tom Sermanni came and presented on the course. Robbie Hooker moved from the Matildas to the Socceroos with Holger (Osieck), and that left a gap in the Matildas setup. So that’s how it all started.
“Before that, I was working with Mosman in community football on the Northern Beaches as Technical Director, and doing a couple of things with Knox Grammar School. Coaching’s a hard gig here, there’s very few full time opportunities. I worked my way through and when the Matildas thing came up, I just took it, it was a great opportunity.”
Prior went to the 2011 World Cup as an assistant coach, helping the Matildas to a quarter final appearance. He also took charge of a highly talented Young Matildas squad with a number of familiar names.
“There was a real synergy between the senior squad and the Young Matildas. A lot of the Young Matildas were in the seniors, so it made sense that I worked with both programs. We’re talking about Caitlin Foord, Steph Catley, Alanna Kennedy, Brianna Davey, it was a really good group of players.”
After his time with Australian national teams, there was a change of both role and location in 2013 with Prior becoming Technical Director at Football Federation Tasmania.
“I had support to step out of women’s football and do some stuff down in Tasmania. We introduced the SAP program down there, we made some big strides in terms of both the Boys NTC program and the Girls NTC program.”
However, the position proved challenging as his family stayed in Sydney. Prior returned to Sydney and was doing work locally before another interesting opportunity came his way: head coach of NSW NPL side North Shore Mariners.
“I’d come back to Sydney, I was doing some work with Knox Grammar and doing work around the North Shore. I got approached to go in there and head up the women’s program.
“We put together a decent squad, it was developing nicely, I brought in Chloe Logarzo and Lisa De Vanna. The club had a reasonably good budget and they were prepared to invest in bringing some senior players in to help the younger players, but I didn’t see the season out, I got another job.”
To say that this next job offer was unexpected would be a massive understatement. Prior was asked to be the head coach of Thailand’s women’s national team, a conversation that – perhaps appropriately given the colour of Thailand’s jerseys – he describes as coming ‘out of the blue’.
“I got a phone call from an agent asking if I’d be interested to go and coach Thailand’s women’s team. I thought he was joking. The story is, the guy who put me forward for it was actually Bernie Ibini’s agent, and because I’d worked with Princess and coached her at the NTC program, my name came up at a dinner one night where they were talking. It was a chance to go and be a head coach of a women’s national team, potentially qualify for a World Cup. So I jumped at it, it was a good experience.”
Prior would soon learn about the pressures of life within the Thai national team setup. The team had been inactive for the eight months following the 2015 World Cup, but he still had to select a squad for an away game against China in his first week as the head coach. Next up was the AFF Championship (for Southeast Asian nations), and Prior was fully aware of the expectations being placed upon him and the squad.
“It’s Thailand, so you have to win these things and we were fortunate enough, we beat Vietnam on penalties. We won the AFF, it bought me more time. It’s about survival in Asia. So we did that and then qualified for the Asian Cup.”
Not satisfied with regional success, Prior had ambitions of bringing the Thai program up to the level of Asia’s top nations.
“I had to adapt and understand Thai culture and get accepted before I could start to implement what we really wanted, which was to get them fitter, get them stronger, get them to be more resilient, get them to not just accept being the best team in Southeast Asia, but to be competitive in Asia.
“We knew there were going to be six teams qualifying for the 2019 World Cup, so we really wanted to make sure that we were competitive against China, competitive with the Matildas. That would be the benchmark.”
Even though he was no longer head coach by the time the 2018 Asian Cup was played, that tournament still gave Prior one of his proudest moments.
“The side went on and they qualified for the World Cup, and they nearly beat the Matildas. I mean, Alanna Kennedy scored in the last minute (to take the game to extra time, with the Matildas eventually winning that semi final on penalties). Even though I wasn’t in charge, that was probably one of my most pleasing things, seeing how they competed with the Matildas that day. I felt like I’d done my job and got them to where I wanted to get them.”
On his return to Australia, Prior settled into ‘normal’ life. He took up a role in recruitment, save for a short stint in 2019 with Thai men’s club Port FC, and relished the stability his new job provided.
“As a football coach, to have a normal job is great, because you know you’re going to get paid, and you know you’ve got income, and you don’t have to wear three t-shirts in a day. That’s the life of a football coach in Australia.”
It was only once he found the balance of work and study (Prior is also completing a psychology degree) that thoughts of coaching began to enter his mind once again. With timing that he described as ‘amazing’, another approach led to Prior’s new role as APIA head coach, where he is aiming to further the development of the next generation of players.
“My motivation is to come and work with a group of players that are fringe national team players. I want to help close the gap to the players that are already contracted with the Matildas. They need a bigger talent pool from a national team perspective.
“My focus is about developing the players, exposing them to different training, higher intensity, and hopefully with that the results come.”
Given his previous experience with the Matildas and the Young Matildas, it is unsurprising that Prior is passionate about helping the national team.
“I desperately want to see the national team be successful. They brought Tony Gustavsson in, which is an amazingly good appointment, he is by all accounts an outstanding coach. He’s a good people manager and I think he’ll get the absolute best out of the group. I’m more aligned to be part of trying to help the next generation and also the ones that I feel are a part of this generation, and giving them the best chance to break into the senior (national team) environment.
“My thing is, over the course of the next six to nine months here, is to get the best out of these players so that they’re better players at the end of the season than when they started.”
APIA have cast a wide net in their recruiting for 2021. Former Emerging Jets winger Sarah Moore is making the long trek from the Hunter Valley to be part of this year’s APIA squad, and wingback Josie Dubbert is commuting from Canberra.
“Sarah’s been coming down here three nights a week and again at the weekend. We said to her, ‘Just back off a little bit, you don’t have to’, but she wanted to test herself in the Sydney competition.
“Josie’s going really well, coming up from Canberra, we’re managing her travel as well. Again, it’s great that she wanted to test herself in the Sydney comp.
“I honestly think that our competition this year is going to be the hardest it’s been because there are players coming from Canberra and Newcastle, and also because some of the players have had a lot of exposure in the W-League this year, it’s going to really make the competition a lot stronger.”
Dubbert in particular has had an interesting career path – she has plenty of experience playing with boys for NPL Capital Football club Brindabella Blues. Prior would like to see this kind of experience become more common in Sydney.
“We train three nights a week, but we should have one night a week where the players can train with boys, we should have a midweek game against boys every other week. It’s exactly what we used to do with the old NSWIS program, you played a game against boys every other week or every week, and you played (against) women every weekend. Playing against boys and training with boys develops your speed of decision making, it improves your first touch, and as long as you’ve got the personality to adapt and handle that, it’s great for the players’ development.
“This year I’ll focus on the individual, making sure that each player gets what they need, the best that they can have, and if one night a week they can get access to training with boys and they need that then we’ll provide it.”
As for the Future Matildas program, Prior sees this as complementary to his goals, and will be more than happy to help any APIA players who are selected for the program.
“We’ll wait and see what Leah (Blayney) wants to do and we’ll support it, 100% we’ll support it. We know our place in the ecosystem, we’re an NPL club, and we know the Future Matildas is a program that, if we can get players going from our program, that then go into Future Matildas, one or two nights or however many nights a week, we’ve done our job.”
When speaking to Prior, his passion for developing the stars of tomorrow and helping them achieve their goals is clear. APIA Leichhardt will be worth keeping an eye on as the 2021 NSW NPL season progresses, and in a few years we may look back and see this season as the start of something special for their players.
