Flaherty, herself, is undeterred and – having already accomplished her B Licence – has set her sights on making use of for the A Licence within the coming years and hopes to finally handle within the prime tier. The 31-year-old hung up her boots in January after a enjoying profession that included eight league titles, together with 4 within the WSL period – two with Arsenal and two with Chelsea, seven FA Cups and a European Cup with Arsenal as a youngster in 2007.
‘I put my physique on the road for any membership I performed for’
“I’d wish to suppose followers, managers and gamers knew what they had been going to get with me, that I left all the things on the pitch, I wore my coronary heart on my sleeve and I put my physique on the road for any membership I performed for,” the previous England centre-half says. “That’s what I used to delight myself on: setting the requirements.
“I’d wish to be a supervisor as a result of I really feel I’d be a extremely good man-manager. What gamers actually need is honesty, and consistency. There are solely 11 areas on the crew, however generally managers have discovered it onerous to have these troublesome conversations. There are occasions after I watch and suppose: ‘I may take care of that participant and have an effect.’ I do suppose it’ll be one thing that I do finally, I’d wish to be a WSL supervisor.”
Managing within the WSL would really feel like a pure step for somebody who has been synonymous with the division since its inception in 2011. The truth is, it was Flaherty who scored the competitors’s first objective, in a 1-0 win for Arsenal towards her future membership Chelsea in April 2011 at Imperial Fields, the house of males’s non-League facet Tooting and Mitcham.
“It’s in all probability a terrific pub quiz query. I’m ready for the day now that I’m within the pub and I get requested that query so I do know I can reply it,” she says with a chuckle.
“No one actually would have thought a centre-back would have gotten that objective, and undoubtedly not me. I believe plenty of strikers had been a bit gutted. Because the years have gone on, it’s hit house extra, the enormity of that and the way particular it was.”
‘Kate is sizzling on my heels’
It isn’t the one WSL document to Flaherty’s identify, though the opposite is below ever-increasing menace. Flaherty has made probably the most appearances in WSL historical past (177) however Kate Longhurst, her former West Ham team-mate, is only one behind her.
“Kate is sizzling on my heels, and if the looks document was going to be taken by anybody, I’d need it to be taken by Kate,” she says.
Flaherty has a brand new goal now – punditry. The previous Lioness was behind the microphone at Ashton Gate to co-commentate for BBC radio on England’s 6-1 victory over Belgium in February, and says: “I really feel like I’ve gone again to high school, I really feel like I’m a sponge once more. I’m again as that 15-year-old making her Arsenal debut. I’m having coaching classes, and I’ve been finding out and listening to different commentators, and [my agents] give me suggestions to take ahead.
“I used to be at all times very crucial of myself enjoying soccer and now I’m the identical. I don’t simply wish to do it on a whim, I wish to be one of the best I can presumably be on this space, and be one of the best pundit and co-commentator.”
Maybe sooner or later she will likely be aiming to be one of the best supervisor, too.
