Stags’ boss Adam Murray revealed during this morning’s news conference that former Football League striker Karl Hawley has joined the club on a short-term basis to coach our strikers.
The 34-year-old former Carlisle United frontman is currently playing for Stourbridge in the Evo-Stik Northern Premier League and Murray says he hopes his crop of forwards will benefit from having someone with vast Football League experience working with them.
And Hawley will look to refine the skills of Stags' marksmen Matt Green, Emmanuel Dieseruvwe, Adi Yussuf and Chris Beardsley in the coming weeks.
And Hawley will look to refine the skills of Stags' marksmen Matt Green, Emmanuel Dieseruvwe, Adi Yussuf and Chris Beardsley in the coming weeks.
“Karl’s obviously someone who I’ve known through football all my life and he’s someone that I trust and he’s got a lot of experience in the Football League at a very high standard – he’s obviously scored a lot of goals through his career.
“So just for these few weeks, towards the end of the season, I’m just having a look at him doing some work with the forward players because he’s obviously got a lot of nous in that final third.”
After amassing over 400 appearances in professional football, Hawley is the Evo-Stik Premier Division’s top scorer this season with 24 goals and the boss believes that his experience can add another ‘one percent’ into Stags’ forwards.
“Karl had a chat with Greeny (Matt Green, striker) the other day and there was a real enthusiasm about what could possibly be done there, for all of our strikers coming through the club. He’s played at Championship level and scored goals – he’s averaged something like one in two [or] one in three through all his career.
“To try and get that [knowledge] into our young boys and people like Greeny, they appreciate that.”
The gaffer hopes that Hawley’s spell with the club will prove to be valuable for everyone and is open to making the arrangement a permanent one if it suits all parties.
“It’s one where there’s no ties on it – there’s no rules to it, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how it works out in terms of the players and how they take to it and if it suits Karl and the rest of the staff. If it does, I think it’ll add to us because I’m a big believer that the game is moving in that way – there will be 'unit coaches' which are permanent in the game soon.
“You look at sports like American football and stuff like that, they’re (unit coaches) a constant, it’s a given. What I’ve never got is goalkeepers always have a goalkeeper coach, why hasn’t every other unit got one? We’ll see if it can help, if it does then brilliant.”
You can view Adam Murray’s news conference, in full, later today on Stags Player HD.
