Crawley Wasps appoint first ever full-time manager

The appointment came after the departure of former manager Dan Logue, who left the club earlier this month. McCarthy has a wealth of experience in Women’s football, having coached at Brunel University, Millwall Lionesses, Fulham and Lewes, in addition to working with players at the Women’s Super League and international levels.

With McCarthy’s recent coaching history being in the youth section of the club, he was appointed as manager last week by Chairman Jack Ayles after “having his eyes set on the role for some time.” McCarthy said: “I'm delighted to be appointed as the Wasps manager.

“I have a vision for this club, where I want to work closely with every player and really build on a culture and style right the way through all the teams. I planned to spend a lot of my time embedding this with the youth whilst supporting the previous manager - so this opportunity has definitely come sooner than expected - but I'm relishing the challenge and still have a watchful supportive eye over the youth set up!”

McCarthy then discussed his relationship with club chairman Jack Ayles: “I got to know Crawley Wasps and Jack this past year through my Development Academy set up for girls based in Croydon called Volenti Girls Academy. Jack liked the high quality level of coaching that we provide to over 100 girls every week - and firstly wanted that kind of set up for the Wasps’ youth to help it improve. It was then I sat down with Jack and actually expressed my vision for the club going forward that included the 1st team. This club can definitely push on to the next level and have some great youthful talent break into the first team to help sustain our position in the Women's football pyramid. Then we can start aiming higher!”

Ayles said: “For the first time in our history we will have a full-time manager. Charlie has been instrumental in building the youth academy structure where we are now training twice a week and competing to the highest level we can in order to develop the future first team players.

“The logical move was to progress Charlie’s role to include the management of the first-team while ensuring we have a successful youth pathway. Charlie will work closely with myself and my business partner Perry McCarthy to continue to progress the club behind the scenes and to reach our goal of promotion to the championship.”

The newly-appointed manager described the first few days in the job as an “extremely fast start” and explained that his priorities were to introduce a simple game plan that can be used to build confidence and results on the pitch: “The key elements I'm working on is to build positive relationships and understanding with all the players in my team, and start to push these girls onward and to build a culture within the squad. Two training sessions in, I couldn't have asked for a better response from everyone.”

McCarthy’s first game in charge will be away to Ipswich Town this Sunday 2 October.