Nathan Rooney has squeezed a lot into the last 15 years. At 18, he was working for hometown club Blackburn Rovers in their pre-academy age groups and supporting coaching education for the women’s department.
By 22, he had gained his Uefa “A” licence. By 24, he was working under Uwe Rosler at Fleetwood and jobs at two more EFL clubs followed at Fleetwood and Crawley. He has been an assistant manager, a first-team coach, an Under-18 coach, Under-23 coach and an interim manager. He has the League Managers Diploma and is studying for the Uefa Pro Licence.
A year ago, Rooney got an offer to take his first full-time managerial job. It was not a typical gig: FC Magpies are in the Gibraltan Football League in the British Overseas Territory where every match in the league season takes place in the same stadium.
In his first half season, he took them into the Europa Conference League and a domestic cup final. Two late goals by Northern Irish side Crusaders ruined the chance of a meeting with FC Basel.
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“Graham’s story is obviously an inspiration,” Rooney says. “I also think that if you’re trying to replicate someone else’s story that you can get a little impatient – you never know when the opportunities will come. But I think what Graham did is to help broaden the horizons of clubs in England and abroad about the potential of young English coaches.
“For those coaches, moving abroad is a great incentive. You aren’t managing within your own football culture. You might have different meal times, different training times, different weather conditions, different culture of players. For Graham to manage that in Sweden, over an extended period…people will never realise how impressive a job that was. I want to get a project like that, of course.
“You look at the likes of Graham and Will Still. Will invested a lot of time in himself, with his languages – I’m now learning Spanish – and his video analysis and the hours spent coaching. I think the key is to understand how you are seen from the outside.
“I’m now around 80 games in as a head coach, with around 60 wins. There’s over 100 as a No 2 in the EFL. I’ve been an interim manager before that and Under-23 coaching before that, under German, Spanish, Scottish, English coaches. There’s a decade there, mistakes I’ve learnt from.”
If leaving his comfort zone to manage away from his home in Lancashire was a calculated professional risk, it is a decision that took on extra significance given Rooney’s family situation.
Last year, he married current Liverpool FC Women defender – and Wales international – Rhiannon Roberts. The couple have been together for 14 years and, understandably, their lives are dominated by football.
Rooney flies home every three or four weeks and watches Rhiannon play whenever possible. It’s fair to say this is an atypical relationship dominated by their love of their sport.
“My coaching career started a couple of years before Rhiannon and I met. So the journey has been together – a young guy starting their coaching career and a young girl who was starting her playing career. Rhiannon is incredibly understanding that hopefully my career is just starting and she is now beginning to think about what comes next for her too.
2022…. What a year!
— Nathan Rooney
Married my lovely wife and lost at 5 aside all on the same day
2023… Vamos!! pic.twitter.com/ipnnzPgQpJ(@NathanRooney89) December 31, 2022
“It’s not for me to tell Rhiannon what to do! But I think she’s incredibly good with that 15, 17 and 19 age bracket, because the girls really look up to her. She’s doing a lot of coaching in the north west. And then she is also supporting the FAW, giving back to the next generation there too. There will be so many opportunities for her because she’s brilliant at what she does.
“We feed off each other. Wherever Rhiannon is, I make the effort to go and watch her games and have got to know the club officials and the coaches and so we have the same friendship group.
“We don’t shut ourselves in the front room and get the tactics board out, but we watch football, we socialise, we have a very strong marriage and social and professional network around us. It’s about having a partnership: we talk about how we can tell our stories when we’re older. We just want to maximise our careers to be the best we can.”
The longer-term dream is for him and Rhiannon to work in football coaching for years to come, leaning upon each other and becoming a two-person support network wrapped up in a wonderful marriage. The short-term dream, as Rooney says, is to qualify again for the Europa Conference League this season and prick the ears of club chairmen across Europe to persuade them that he is worth taking a chance on. He knows that his pathway is unusual, but also believes that, at 33, he already has enough experience to make steps forward.
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“I would like people to say ‘I like how he talks. He’s proven he can win games and manage players from around the world. I like his enthusiasm. I like the risks he’s taken and I like how they have worked for him’,” Rooney says. “I like to tell the personal side, the family that have looked after me by being at Carlisle and Fleetwood on a wet Wednesday night. They have been unbelievable. It’s not just my story, it’s theirs too.
“But I now need to write the next chapter of that story by backing everything up and making them all as proud as possible. It’s not about what’s next. It’s about making the best of yourself by backing yourself to be the best you can.”
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