He was the first man appointed to the staff of Auckland FC — and that was only 10 months ago.
Terry McFlynn was tasked with recruiting players from the ground up and also helping set up the new A-League club from scratch.
“First and foremost, it was about getting the right characters in the building… people who want to be here for the right reasons, people who want to build a football club for the community, but also win trophies and titles,” he said.
McFlynn knows about character and winning. A Northern Ireland youth international, the 41-year-old has lived for the past 20 years in Australia — 10 of those years as a skilful midfielder for Sydney FC.
After his playing days ended in 2014, McFlynn started his back-office career with Sydney, as the team’s welfare manager. He then spent time with Perth Glory in Western Australia, as their academy director.
A phone call late last year and a discussion with Auckland FC’s majority owner — American Bill Foley — saw McFlynn take on his toughest role yet.
He snapped up the Auckland job last December, starting a whole new club from the ground up. Twelve months on, Auckland FC lead the new A-League season.
“I looked at it through the lens of what do the players need, what do the players want to be successful. I was there in 2005 as a player, when Sydney FC started, so I had a fair idea what works for players in trying to be successful.”
1News asked McFlynn: Where on earth do you start recruiting players?
“We had a really clear strategy,” he said. “We wanted as many New Zealand players as possible… we contacted every New Zealand player we could get in touch with across the world.
“The All Whites played in Egypt back in March, Steve [head coach Steve Corica] and I headed there to meet the national team.
“That became like a jigsaw puzzle, some players were already contracted and unavailable, at least for a season or two. Some became available straight away.
“I reckon we made, not hundreds, but thousands of phone calls.”
They ended up with 18 Kiwis on their books.
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Aussies and imports were next, including Uruguayan striker Guillermo May, who at the time was playing in Argentina.
“It was difficult to begin with, there were no games to look at and no club,” said May.
“My brother lived in Australia, he told me New Zealand was a really nice country… it made any decision easy after that.”
McFlynn says the club recruits on two things — character and competence.
“Competence comes from looking at analytics, character comes from asking around. We do background checks with ex-players, ex-coaches, executives.”
Networking helps and subscribing to companies who keep data on players all around the world.
As a start-up club, Auckland FC has certain dispensations from the A-League’s salary cap.
Signing a coach was also a priority.
McFlynn, the club owners and board interviewed eight candidates. In the end, former Australian international and ex-Sydney FC coach Corica was a unanimous decision.
“Terry and I played together at Sydney, and then we worked together as well on the staff after that,” said Corica. “He’s been amazing… he’s done a lot research on players as well from New Zealand that we wanted to get.”
Auckland’s A-League licence was announced a year ago today.
Since then, a team, coaching and high performance staff and an executive have been appointed, and are working non-stop. A clubhouse has been built from scratch inside North Harbour stadium, including a new gym, set up in an empty kitchen area and offices, which were previously empty corporate boxes.
“To start a club from nothing within 10 months, have 25,000 people in the stadium, behind a team that didn’t exist 10 months ago… Ii is a very very special thing,” said McFlynn.
