Jonathan Gould back in Napier this week. Photo / Warren Buckland
Jonathan Gould back in Napier this week. Photo / Warren Buckland
Is this New Zealand's most Covid tested man?
English football coach Jonathan Gould has endured the process 19 times in the past few months.
But he's not getting his nose out of joint. Quite the opposite, it's the bit he's had to do to both play and stay in thegame before finally being back home – in Napier.
"I'm not going to go back in a while," said the 52-year-old former Scotland international, who was born in London's Paddington, as he turned his focus to his latest appointment, as director of football for Hawke's Bay United.
The appointment announced this week returns him to where his love affair with New Zealand started, helping Napier City Rovers to a national soccer league title as a future-focused 21-year-old in 1989.
It heralded a successful career which would see him winning two Scottish Premiership medals with Celtic and becoming a Scottish international, thanks to the Lanarkshire heritage of his grandparents, before returning to Napier as player-coach with United in 2005-2009.
Jonathan Gould (in white) as Hawke's Bay United player-coach on 2006. Photo /File
He joined New Zealand A-League side Phoenix as assistant coach in 2009, and among trips back to the Bay was one as coach of a Phoenix A-team for a friendly with HBU in 2013.
"It's an opportunity to put everything back into the game," said Gould, who, as part of the job, will support United coaches Chris Greatholder and Bill Robertson.
Greatholder said: "Jonathan is a major asset to the region and also to football in New Zealand. We are delighted to be working with him, he brings a wealth of knowledge and professionalism to the table."
Gould and wife Emma have had a home in Waimarama since 2005 and, back in the Bay after completing a season as goalkeeping coach with English Football Championship team Preston North End, he's focused on bringing out the best in football talent in the region, in particular addressing the drift of players away from sport in the early-mid teens.
On one hand, he can stop in one place, after at least 20 trips back to the UK over the years, but it will also take the mind off the repeated "poking" of the nostrils and swabbing of the throat, twice a week as he, other officials and players maintained their validity in English professional football.
Travelling "home" through Singapore he had 14 days' quarantine, without a football, at the Holiday Inn Auckland Airport, where he had Covid tests "numbers 18 and 19."
Jonathan Gould (left) as Phoenix A-team coach in Napier for a friendly against Hawke's Bay United in 2013. Photo / File
"I didn't consider it a hardship," said Gould, who has seen at relatively close quarters the impact of the Covid crisis, with players having returned positive tests in the UK.
"It only takes one contact … " he said, in his second week since ending quarantine on August 18.
But football contacts are another thing:
"This region has a proud football history and following Napier City Rovers Chatham Cup final win last year we can capitalise on the goodwill."
The Hawke's Bay United board says one of the objectives in the signing was to have another senior figure alongside Greatholder and Robertson, to focus on ongoing welfare of the coaching group and players and the health and safety of all in the franchise, which it says "seems particularly pertinent" in the Covid-19 environment.
The ISPS Handa New Zealand Premiership is due for a mid-November start, with Hawke's Bay United looking for early form to put behind it the outcome of last season - 9th in a field of 10.
