Helen Bleazard: A whirlwind first season at AFC Bournemouth

‘Go with your gut’

Taking on a role as head coach, one which was made permanent in September, also means a steep learning curve with some of the soft skills required to manage personnel – particularly as Bleazard was leading a group that contained many players who had previously been her team-mates and, in many cases, her friends.

“The coaching is the easy part - it’s the managing,” she says. “It ended up being quite a lonely first few months of just trying to navigate that and also establishing boundaries with those players who I’d played alongside and making sure that I was fair and consistent with everyone.

“That was a big thing, to make sure that I was consistent with every message I was giving. I’m not going to make every player happy, I’m very aware of that, but it was about trying to be as consistent and as honest as I could and making sure my management team were aligned with that.

“I’ve been very honest: I’ve said it to the group, I’ve said it in many interviews, I’ve got lots of things wrong this year. I think there are moments where I’ve gone with my gut feeling rather than something I’d planned throughout the week. I always say, ‘Go with your gut,’ because it is usually right, but at the same time, I’m quite open for feedback.”

Bleazard pinpoints a moment early on in the season where she began to have more confidence in herself as head coach – making an on-pitch tweak that turned the game around.

“We were drawing and it was 1-1. We weren’t playing our best and I tweaked the formation - I tweaked a player who doesn’t usually play in that position, and then we went on to win.

“I was like, ‘I just need to back myself more.’ It was not imposter syndrome, but coming in as a manager or a head coach is one thing, but doing it around my peers was a huge psychological battle for me, going, ‘Am I good enough for this?’ I knew I had the capabilities to be able to coach the team and make them better. It was just backing myself with that.

“That’s something that’s quite rare. I usually back myself. I’ve always backed myself as a footballer. Coming into this, it was just that unknown.”

‘You need work-life balance’

Coaching the women’s senior team and the boys’ academy also means she negotiates some different challenges.

“In the women’s game, I’m Blez, but I’m coach Helen to [the boys]. When the boys say ‘Helen’, I pay attention; when the girls say ‘Helen’, it’s just in one ear, out the other!

“There have been some sessions that I’ve done with the women that then 45 minutes later, I’ve gone and done with the boys, and I’ve had a totally different reaction because girls and women, they ask ‘why?’ a lot. They want to know why they’re doing it.

“It’s not that they’re challenging [the coach]. I was a player like that, I just wanted to know why I was doing it. I could say the exact same thing to a boy and they just do it. Some of them might ask why, but some just jump straight into it. They don’t need to know. They just want to execute it.”

Bleazard is now full-time at AFC Bournemouth, and as soon as the season finished, she was already looking ahead to the start of the next campaign, leading progression meetings with players and staff, and beginning plans for recruitment. However, she says that it is important that as head coach she gets some time off – even if it is not always easy to do that.

“It’s something I’ve struggled with, but I do have to get used to that. I had a bit of a break in the Christmas period [when the FA Women’s National League has some weeks off] and I don’t think I realised how much I needed it until that moment.

“I have a very, very supportive partner, but there is a non-negotiable: I will not be bringing my work phone on holiday! There might be certain things I get the odd update on, but I will be switching off, but also just enjoying time away from football as well. No matter what job you work with in the game, you need to have that work-life balance because you don’t get much time off during the season, so when you do get time off, you’ve got to make the most of it.”

But there is another commitment. Bleazard has always been passionate about coaching and gaining more knowledge, and begins her UEFA A Licence work this summer.

“I’m like a sponge, I always want to learn. I always write so much down.

“As a player, I’ve been coached by so many good coaches and managers. We always say it within the coaching world, you’re all thieves, you all take the best bits, and that ultimately makes it your playing philosophy and your coaching philosophy. I think everyone does that.

“You take the situations you’ve been in and go, ‘That’s what I don’t want to be,’ and then you take the good bits off everyone else and go, ‘Yeah, that’s what I aspire to be,’ and then create that into your own methodology.”

‘It’s up for grabs’

In the upper echelons of women’s football, there are always discussions about balancing a competitive side with financial sustainability, and AFC Bournemouth are no exception. Bleazard has big ambitions as a head coach, and wants to achieve her goals with a group that share her ideals and buy in to the club philosophy.

“Do I want to get promoted? It’s the competitive nature in me. Of course I do. But is that the ultimate goal? It’s about making sure that we are a competitive group. We want to do everything the right way and we want to have the right characters and create the right culture.

“This season, no one talked about promotion internally because we were just making sure week by week we put that focus in. Obviously you get outside noise and everyone talking about it from different angles, but we know it’s going to be really, really competitive with the teams that are going to be in the league.

“I think it’s up for grabs next season. Do I think we’re going to be up there? Absolutely. That’s our competitive nature and where we should look to aspire to. We don’t just want to be sitting there and just being around the mid-table. We want to make it ultra-competitive. And we certainly will do that.

“That’s my job at the end of the day. I’m there to challenge players within the club - but also I’m there to make them better as well.”

And as the third tier of women’s football in England becomes more professional, clubs are working hard to develop their audiences, and Bleazard is well aware of the important role the team’s performances play in that.

“We want to grow our fan base. It’s already grown exponentially this year,” she says, pointing to the 2,000 spectators who were at Totton for the visit of Manchester City in the Women’s FA Cup at the start of the year, and the 5,000 fans who cheered on the team against Real Bedford at the Vitality Stadium in April.

“We’re here to create a really strong community base and to create a legacy within Bournemouth Women, so it’s not just the men that are talked about on a regular basis - and rightly so, I may add - but the women are talked about a lot more.

“It’s not just [about] what we’re looking to do on the pitch, it’s about inspiring that next generation off it as well.”