Wolves head of high performance Phil Hayward marked a year since his return to the club recently and feels he’s now brought increased experience to the club he now describes as “home”.
Hayward, who served in a number of medical roles at Compton Park between May 2008 and December 2019, returned to the club at the start of 2023, leading the high performance and medical department overseeing the men's, women's and academy teams.
January brought up Hayward’s one-year anniversary, during which period he saw the head coach and support staff change, with Gary O’Neil arriving in the summer and guiding the club to a positive campaign across 2023/24 so far.
However, Hayward’s role isn’t focused directly on the first-team, but working across the club to implement Wolves’ medical and performance strategy, and it’s a project he’s thriving in.
Hayward said: “It’s been great to be back. Obviously, the club’s changed a lot in the time I was away. Things had moved on and developed, but also a lot had changed as a consequence of Covid. A lot of things that happened around that time led us to where we are now in many ways.
“It’s been great to be back and there were quite a few familiar faces from before, but also a number of new people with new ideas and new enthusiasm, so it’s been really nice. A mix of familiarity, but also some new input from the new faces.”
In his three years away from Wolverhampton, Hayward served as director of performance of LA Galaxy in the USA, before returning to the UK and running a sports consultancy company, working with individual athletes including Andy Murray.
When Matt Hobbs, fresh to the sporting director role, began conversations about a possible return it had to be right for Hayward, and the direction the club was heading in excited him for a return.
He said: “I’d been working at LA Galaxy for just shy of two years from 2020, but I’d only been there three months when Covid hit and lockdown came in, which was quite difficult in terms of settling in a new city with the family and trying to get my teeth into the new role. Towards the back end I decided it was the right time to come back to the UK for a number of different reasons, but Covid was a big part of that.
“When I came back, I set up my own consultancy with different sport teams and franchises in the UK and abroad, but also working with individual athletes, so it was a nice mix. Towards the back end of the time, it was the World Cup break, and the new coach [Julen Lopetegui] was coming in here and Matt Hobbs was taking his new role as sporting director, building his team.
“We had quite a few conversations around that time about how I saw things before and how I might see things moving forward, and as those conversations evolved, we decided there was an opportunity here for me to come back and start the new project with him and start to hopefully take the best things from before and implement new ideas.”
Broadened by those new experiences, Hayward has brought fresh ideas, looking to create one philosophy and way of working across all the departments and different groups, and working with an open mind has proved useful in Hayward’s first year back in the West Midlands.
“We had quite a successful time when I was here before, from 2016 when Fosun took over until leaving. We wanted to try and start working in a similar way, not to go in the old way, because the ideas brought in by the new staff were good ideas. We tried to mesh those two philosophies together.
“For me, it was a great opportunity to come back to the club which I saw as my own club. I’m not from this area, but I moved here in 2008 to work here, so I was here for such a long time before, it becomes a huge part of your life – my kids are big Wolves fans, and we live in the area. If I was every going to come back into football, this would be the one job that would attract me.
“I was enjoying the variety before, but that real affinity with the club was something I’d never really lost, and I stayed in touch with quite a lot of people here. It was a great opportunity for me personally and hopefully a positive thing for the club.”
A further Hayward update, including new staff recruits and how the medical and performance department has been transformed, will be available on wolves.co.uk next week.
