Cardle's Napier departure brings hope to QMU

After three years at the helm of Edinburgh Napier’s top footballing side, Gary Cardle has decided to call time on his career at Saughton and step up to the monumental challenge of taking the reigns at Queen Margaret University, currently lingering in the Scottish seventh division. But as the veteran coach tells The Journal, it’s nothing he hasn’t done before.

No stranger to Scottish university football, Cardle has held coaching positions at both Heriot-Watt and St Andrews, and has also worked south of the border where he steered Liverpool Hope University to British plate championship glory in 1999/2000. A spell with Manchester United and further coaching programs in Canada and the USA have also provided QMU’s manager-to-be with a wealth of coaching experience over the last ten years.

However, despite a decade in the industry, Cardle cites the toughest challenge of his career as nurturing the squad at Saughton Park: “When I took over at Napier, the club was in a lowly division four,” says Cardle, “but with a little bit of organisation towards the club structure, we then became a major force in university football.”

One presumes that modesty forbids the ex-Napier boss from telling the whole truth about the difficulties of reversing the clubs fortunes early in our exchange, and I soon find out that “a little bit of organisation” is an understatement to say the least.

“When I took over as coach, there was no structure about the club,” Cardle tells me. “Attendance was poor and the players’ approach to training was that it was little more than a kick-about with their mates.”

With this in mind, I cannot help but be impressed at the level of progression that Napier has made under Cardle in what has been, in football terms, a remarkably short space of time. With two Scottish University titles under his belt, and impressive performances in the Anderson Cup and East of Scotland championships, Cardle’s presence has clearly made an impact on what was previously a shambolic outfit.

“Working with the club captains and committee over the past years, we have managed to stabilise the club with a structure where players are more competitive,” Cardle says, continuing, “attendance at training has been excellent, but most importantly, we have succeeded in instilling a sense of unity at the club, meaning the boys can have fun, but still produce first-rate performances on the pitch.”

The zeal with which former Napier boss describes the changes he brought to the table makes it clear that he is a man with true passion for building football teams from the ground up, and with this in mind, there are fewer teams more in need of the sort of lift that he is able to offer than Queen Margaret. Moreover, he is aware of the time that it will take to rear a new club from zero to hero status:

“The goals at QMU are to build stability and organisation within the club; instill confidence within the players and, most importantly, win the League Championships and progress through the higher divisions. Anything is achievable with hard work and I see no reason why we can’t build a solid team at QMU.

“QMU is a club that should be competing with the best in Scottish university football, just like Napier is now. It is an excellent challenge and I always thrive on challenges, this opportunity requires a more long-term commitment from myself as the club is currently in division seven, but with hard work from the guys at QMU on and off the field, we can make it work, no doubt about it.”

As a veteran of Scottish university football, Cardle is pleased with the inroads to success made by student clubs over the last ten years, particularly given the wealth of talent that exists in other regions of the British Universities and College Sport championships:

“In my ten years coaching at university level, I have seen excellent progress from Scottish football teams in terms of closing the gap that exists between them and their counterparts south of the border’” he says. “This has been down to the hard work put in by the staff at Scottish University Sport and the Scottish University Football Co-ordinator Ross Campbell, implementing and developing the Sport with consistent improvements from year to year.

“Having such an excellent organisation associated with universities in Scotland to offer guidance and support each year for sports presidents and club captains certainly helps produce success on the field and I hope this continues for many years to come.”