From the Premier League to PNG: Prior’s World Cup dream

Former Manchester City defender Spencer Prior speaks to FIFA about his bid to take Papua New Guinea to the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Papua New Guinea’s women’s coach is not a job Spencer Prior ever expected to see on his CV.

His playing days were spent almost exclusively in the elite environment of his native England, where this no-nonsense centre-back turned out for Manchester City, won a League Cup with Leicester City and starred in the most famous victory of Norwich City’s history. But while the 30th anniversary of the Canaries’ 2-1 win away to Bayern Munich rolls around in October, Prior is hoping to have an even more momentous success story to celebrate in the meantime.

He and his PNG team are, after all, just two matches away from reaching the nation’s maiden FIFA Women’s World Cup™.

The Pacific islanders made history simply by reaching the Play-off Tournament for those global finals, having booked their slot by winning a first-ever OFC Nations Cup title. And while Prior wasn’t the coach to oversee that landmark triumph, he has been recruited to add another layer of professionalism to the Lakatois’ play-off preparations.

“The idea is for me is to implement a high-performance mindset programme,” he explained to FIFA+. “That’s not to say these players haven’t done well before. But we’ve been trying to bring an understanding that there’s high performance and low performance – and nothing in between.

“If you switch off, your bar drops and that’s low performance. So every time the players go out on to that training pitch and everything they do away from the field – what they eat, how they sleep, their recovery, analysing opponents – needs to be done with a high-performance mindset.

“That’s what I’ve been brought in to achieve, and the fact the players have bought in so well to that should stand us in good stead for this play-off tournament. Getting a team other than New Zealand to the World Cup is such a big common goal in this region, and with New Zealand not involved this time (due to qualifying as hosts), it’s a great opportunity – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really – for PNG to do that.

“Yes, we’ll be underdogs. But we’re not approaching it with any fear. Going into anything with fear can be crippling, so we’re just doing everything we can to make sure the team go into that first match feeling positive about themselves and mentally, physically and tactically prepared for what awaits them.”