At home with Hope Powell: Brighton manager on coaching from her kitchen during lockdown

For Brighton Women, this is what their press conferences will look like for the foreseeable: Hope Powell on a video call from her kitchen, player Felicity Gibbons on a video call from her front room. Initially, they are so disoriented by the whole thing that begin to chat as if no one is listening and their press officer, from his own front room, has to remind them that there are journalists listening in also.

Powell says the coronavirus crisis has left her “more busy than when I am actually in the office”: from the club’s regional talent centres to the first team, Powell has organised “training programmes, correspondence with players, correspondence with staff, dealing with all the queries”. There have been wider staff calls, Powell explains, where “so many offered their help to people in the community where ordinarily they might be struggling. It’s about people first and football second.”

There is still a daily staff meeting, and four mornings a week the team completes a video call where they train indoors together before taking off for their outdoor pitch sessions alone. Players have home GPS systems, accessible to the club. Injured players feed information daily to a women’s performance system and this week, Powell says, “We are sending them all bikes so they can do static fitness work. There is daily contact with every player. All the players are getting the equipment they need to fulfil the conditioning programme they have been given: bands, footballs, cones, whatever the club has been able to get. There has been a supply shortage.”

Powell jokes that “the players kind of felt like it was like a police state” and while there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus on the women’s side, “some of the players have reported in with what they think are some of the symptoms,” Powell says.

Asked if she was concerned about the financial impact of coronavirus, Powell said: “So far, Brighton have been really supportive. This is a situation that will affect everybody at every club, but we wait and see. That is not my decision. I don’t own the club. I’m governed by people above me, but I know the club will do everything within its power to ensure jobs, basically, are safe - and that is the best they can say.”