There’s an old saying that sticking to your roots in the game of football is perhaps the most important attribute a person involved in the game can have.
When dissecting the meaning of this, it is crucial to discover that the phrase carries a collection of interpretations. Stick by one club, a certain manager or a group of players, for example?
All are true but there is almost a hidden meaning, one that you wouldn’t think would resonate with football fans- the idea of geography.
We’ve all seen it. A player transfers between rivals and while uproar proceeds on one side there is undoubted smugness from the other. So many times on different occasions across swathes of generations.
Yet there are certain moments where the sharing of local expertise and admiration for experience trumps partisan stereotypes, and in 1991 that was exactly the case.
Born in Walthamstow, Roger Ernest Morgan lived just a few miles away from Upton Park. It was that near and such a close-knit community that the famous frenetic fruitsellers from the two areas probably knew each other.
Morgan, like so many in the bustling streets of the East End in the early 1960s, wanted to be a footballer, but instead of claret and blue, he joined the blue and white hoops of Queens Park Rangers.
Yet even after making 180 appearances for the club, and then 68 for Tottenham Hotspur, it was Morgan’s subsequent work at West Ham that would be most remembered.
The fact that he had played at two of the club’s London rivals meant not a jot, and the Hammer’s decision to insist he should be Community Officer was one of the smartest decisions they have perhaps ever taken.
In his time in the job Morgan created two granitic like legacies, the first coaching David Beckham as a youngster, and the second, and even more important, the creation of West Ham United Ladies.
Following a number of initial coaching sessions to bring in local players Morgan captured John Greenacre, who had then recently relinquished his managerial posts at Romford Ladies, to help organise the club.
Two teams were entered into the Greater London Regional Women’s Football League for the following season; one in Division Three and one Division Four.
And while the second team struggled the first flourished and in less than five years had gained promotion to Division One. Overseas trips to Germany and the Netherlands followed, just before goalkeeper Claire Lacey became the club’s first international representative.
As years passed the club further progressed and just over a decade after Morgan had first formed West Ham Ladies they had advanced to the FA Women’s Premier League.
The second team established by Morgan became the reserves, and a transitional youth set-up operating within the foundations of the club became vital to the long-term success of the side.
In 2008/09 this hierarchal structure proved dividends when, from a new base at Thurrock, the first team lifted their first major silverware following victory in the Essex FA County Cup, while the reserves ended the season top of the Premier (Reserves) Division Two South. Even the juniors, as a branch of the reserve team, collected success with haul of silverware including the London FA Girls Youth Cup and the Southern Region Under 16 FA Tesco Cup.
For the next six or seven years the club concentrated on stabilising what they had already built, but then in 2014/15 former United and Liverpool defender Julian Dicks became manager, while two supporters of West Ham, father and son John and Stephen Hunt became owners. All three didn’t last long.
Managerial changes would become commonplace but while uncertainty shrouded performances on the pitch, the construction of West Ham Ladies Learning Academy provided young girls in the area the chance to expand their education through state of the art facilities.
It’s that inspiration, to give something back, that means so much to girls who once were stereotyped as non-footballers to use the game to transform their lives.
Negative headlines have engulfed the club recently after now-former chairman Stephen Hunt accused West Ham of refusing to provide funding for women’s players. But now with new ownership in Jack Sullivan as managing director, the club has changed course once again.
For the better, you’d have to say. The decision to incorporate the Ladies’ side into the parent club was nothing short of a masterstroke, and perhaps it is no surprise that Karen Ray, one of England’s best young coaches now in charge of West Ham, led her team to glory last week.
Her famous quote is: “As they say; a flock of birds flying in formation is 70% more efficient than flying solo.” It’s fitting then that their triumph over Charlton Athletic in the Goodmove.co.uk Women’s Cup is a sign of a team together and no doubt hungry for more success.
For Ray legacy is of the utmost importance. With the club looking to apply for a license to play in the top division of the restructured FA Women’s Super League from 2018/19, she wants to inspire a generation of young girls.
One chap in 1991 had that same belief. It was his insistence to drive forward that has created this platform to build further upon. Ray has taken Morgan’s dream and will mould it into her own, from a man who was Ernest by name but earnest by nature.
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