Greg Draper knows a thing or two about goals. The 33-year-old knows a thing or more about scoring them for The New Saints. Any poor sod who found himself handed the thankless task of marking the former striker between 2011 and 2021 in the Welsh top flight can attest to that.
The thing about scoring a lot of goals — and Draper did score a lot: a club-record 163 in 252 appearances in all competitions for the Welsh Prem juggernauts to be exact, roughly 14% of the club's total across its 30-year existence — is there runs the risk of diluting the experience: of watering down the rapture a goal inherently incites, especially when the goal isn’t, technically, of one’s own doing.
Yet, when Emily Ridge buried TNS Women’s fourth goal against Abergavenny in the 88th minute on February 5 and consequently fired her side into the Adran Premier top-four on the final day of phase one on goals scored, that risk transpired to be total rubbish.
“Oh yeah, I lost it,” Draper tells WalesOnline as he recalls the day. “My head had gone.”
In this moment – on Zoom more than a month later – there is no re-enactment of the pandemonium which allegedly swallowed the New Zealand international’s head. For the last half hour, TNS Women’s head coach Draper has been thoughtful, candid and professionally phlegmatic as we discuss the season in Welsh football's women's top flight, the club and the ambitions to become a European competitor in the women's game.
Still, the sheer elation isn’t difficult to imagine. For a team that had only just survived relegation from the Adran Premier on the final day of the season last year, this season has been a comprehensive head-spin.
“The goal last season was literally just to survive,” Draper explains. “Being the first season after reforming the team, it was just a matter of what we can do to stay in the league for another season. Then, once we did that, it was about pushing ourselves that little bit more. Competing in the top four was obviously the next realistic goal. And some of the games, even last season the performances we put in, we are certainly worthy of being in the top four.”
Heading into the season’s final furlong, TNS Women sit fourth in the Adran Premier, just nine points shy of Cardiff Met. With just four matches to go, it’s a gap which looks highly unlikely to be closed.
Still, it’s a far cry from the club's dour position this time last season: bottom of the table, clinging to threads as they battled relegation with an unfamiliar, hastily-assembled squad.
There was also the metaphysical battle of defying a reputation of being that English club gifted a position in the Welsh women's top flight over more deserving, historic women’s sides in Wales – along with the added onus of ensuring no schadenfreude was had at the team’s expense if the threat of relegation did ultimately prove insurmountable.
In 2021, the FAW restructured the league and cut the number of teams from nine to eight, along with enforcing a shake-up as historic teams who weren't relegated on the field were dropped and new teams parachuted in after an application process. It was all aimed at strengthening the domestic game and improving player pathways.
“That's why it was just so important that we did stay in the league last season because if we'd have got relegated after being given a place in the league, then everyone would've just looked very, very… silly,” Draper says, selecting his words carefully.
Draper doesn’t deny the reputation existed, such is the reality of being associated with the serial winners in the men's game. Yet, he maintains that if the Football Association of Wales wants the women's top flight to grow stronger, having “the biggest clubs” competing within it is paramount.
Besides, whatever lingering vestiges of the team’s potential pantomime villain status last year have been thoroughly ditched courtesy of the women's team's impressive performances on the pitch and their sheer dedication off it.
“You're always going to get people on the outside of the league just voicing their opinions and saying whatever they want without actually knowing what is going on," Draper says. "That's always going to be the way, unfortunately. But the real people that are involved in the league and see the league and see the teams week in, week out are fully aware that we are fully deserving of our place in the league. And the league's better off for it.”
The heads-down, hard-work approach has earned them plenty of recognition from opposition managers. But be warned: this is no carefully crafted PR stunt to pander to the Welsh domestic fandom. TNS have serious ambitions of raising the standards of the club’s women’s and girls set-up to become one the league's, and Europe's, most fearsome competitors.
Already, critical steps are being taken. The appointment of a director for the women’s and girls’ football department to grow the programme is imminent. A year from September, a girls’ scholarship programme is set to be launched, the first step in laying the foundation for an academy system in the ilk of the men’s, which currently hosts 38 boys’ scholarships.
Plans to increase the number of weekly training sessions to three – a move Cardiff City Women implemented this season with rollicking success – are also in the pipeline. Discourse is ongoing around professionalising the women’s senior set-up, a move upon which only Wrexham Women have formerly embarked, albeit at semi-pro level.
Draper acknowledges the challenges which lay ahead in making those ambitions come to fruition, particularly given the amateur status at which the women’s game currently operates in Wales and the delicate balancing act players are still forced to ply.
It was one of the larger hurdles Draper was forced to wrestle with upon taking over as head coach in November last year following Andy Williams’ departure.
“I was a full-time footballer for 10 years at TNS, it was my job," he recalls. "If the manager clicked his fingers, we had to do what he said. You had a day off on a Sunday. If there was a bad result on a Saturday, we might be training on the Sunday morning.
"That was the biggest challenge in terms of the transition from being a player to coaching is, these girls, it's not their full-time job. It's not what their life revolves around 24/7. It’s a distraction from your jobs.”
Still, Draper underlines the commitment the club have already shown and the subsequent successes to arise in such a truncated time period. The women’s team share equal access to the club’s new gym and training facilities, have new training kits and use the same luxury coach as the men to travel the three and a half hours to matches in south Wales, which is a generally weekly event being the only current top-flight team operating in the north.
The strides are arguably small in comparison to those desired in the future, but the ripple effect promises to be momentous.
“Support is a two-way thing, isn't it, really?” Draper ruminates. “The girls have been playing enough for enough years now that they've obviously been at clubs before where you have to pay to be part of it. Times are certainly changing.
“We want to make sure we align the women's team as closely as possible to the men's team, really. And the girls make sure that they're putting in maximum effort and doing all they can on the pitch to repay the club as well.”
The steps require time and patience, but Draper and TNS look at Cardiff City Women as a bon-a-fide blueprint in setting an appropriate benchmark for the league.
“We have to look at who is the best, and I will quite happily hold my hands up and say they are the best team in the league this year,” Draper says.
Next year, however, Draper hopes the club eek closer to seeing that status apply to them. A previously five-year plan to reach the heights of Europe in the women’s game has now been shrunk to three due to the breakneck speed at which the women’s team has mined success.
Draper politely but vigorously denies any plaudits. He owes the season’s foundations to former manager Williams, and the players for buying into his demands and remaining dedicated to the current cause despite the turgid results which defined last season.
Those days feel a distant memory now. Coach rides to and from Shropshire are filled with music blasting from the back, accompanied by questionable but unabashed singing. The goals, too, are arriving with more flair and consistency, up to 34 so far from last season’s 25.
It is joked that if such an upturn persists, his club record might be at risk. Draper cracks a smile. As long as he's the manager, he won’t mind.
“It’s an exciting time,” he adds, returning flawlessly to professional mode. “There's a lot of hard work that's going on. We probably need to work even harder than what we are. It's an exciting challenge but the end goal, when we do achieve it, will certainly be worth it.”
READ NEXT:
- The Welsh-speaking outside-half from Cardiff who decided to play for England to become the best player possible
- 'We deserve it' — Cardiff City Women eye first trophy of season in hunt for domestic treble
- Cardiff City Women emerge from shadows to hunt down first league title in 10 years amid standards boost
- Wrexham AFC eye momentous double promotion as mission to grow women's football revealed
- Sign-up to our Wales, Swansea City or Cardiff City newsletters right here for FREE!
