Interview - Georgina Lillis: Changing the rules of the game for women agents in football

Well she should. Her dad is Mark Lillis, the former Manchester City, Aston Villa and Huddersfield Town player and her little brother is Josh Lillis, the Scunthorpe United goalkeeper.

"I've always loved watching football, I was too young to watch my dad playing, but I've always watched teams that he coached," said Georgina.

"When he was scouting for Villa, he'd take me to games and make me sit there working out the formations. He knew then he was helping me towards a career in the football industry."

Georgina is one of only 10 female football agents in the country. And, at 24, she is one of the youngest.

But if she thought she was going to get an easy ride from the hard-nosed, sometimes misogynistic football managers because of her pedigree, she was mistaken.

On her first day as a certified football agent her opening call to a manager enquiring about players met with a wake-up call.

"I don't know if I like speaking to a woman about this," snapped the manager. "Do you know anything about football?"

"That comment could have knocked my confidence – but it didn't," says Georgina. "It made me think, 'You don't know anything about me, I've grown up with football and probably know as much as you'."

There's a fair chance the 24-year-old from Lindley in Huddersfield does, although she didn't automatically decide to follow her father and brother into the "glorious game".

She spent a year at Liverpool University studying criminology and psychology before realising the student life was not for her.

"I was wasting my parents' money and wasting my time," recalled Georgina, in an early demonstration of the financial prudence that will serve her well as a football agent.

She tried her hand at sports therapy before a tip from a former babysitter set her on the road to becoming an agent at the age of 21. Letters were sent to every agency in the North, with the only response the offer of work as a PA at a small company's London office.

Georgina's bags were packed and so began a career that blossomed earlier this year when she gained her qualifications as a registered football agent.

She continues to work in London two days a week as a PA at her company Star Management Signings, because like her dad, who could play defence but also scored a hat-trick at Wembley for Man City, she has learnt to be versatile.

"My dad has been an unbelievable help," she said of Mark, who is now assistant manager at League Two Morecambe.

"I've always been his PA, sorting out matchday itineraries for him, his travel, etc. He helped me revise, and get me through my exam. Any time I ring a manager, chances are I've met him before and I'll mention my dad's name and he'll know I'm legitimate, someone who actually knows what she's talking about.

"A lot of star players are foreign and they come over here with no English bank account, no English mobile phone, no clue about English ways. If they need boots, I'll find them a deal, if they're moving clubs, I'll find them a house and get their kids into school. You're like a PA to the players.

"A player can ring you and say, 'My heating's broken in my house', 'I can't set my broadband up', 'my Sky's not working'.

"Most of the agent's job is aftercare. We'll get the player the move he wants, we might not make as much money as we can but if it's the move that he wants, that'll benefit him and his whole life.

"To get through to a manager you've got to be either a top agent or know someone within the game. I'd find it hard if I hadn't already been involved in football through my dad."

Gaining the trust of a football manager, as Georgina is discovering, is not easy. People don't become football agents to be popular.

Twenty-five years ago, Graham Taylor told one newspaper that for Christmas he "would like all football agents lined up and shot". The former England manager-turned-pundit modified that slightly last month to "not all, but most of them".

Agents are the fall guys for football's financial problems, with the percentage they take from transfer deals blamed for the amount of money that honest fans put into the game disappearing.

Just last month, agents were sullied again when Sir Alex Ferguson laid the blame for Wayne Rooney's on-off departure from Manchester United and subsequent pay rise to somewhere in the region of 150,000-200,000 a week, at the feet of the England striker's agent.

Georgina said: "A lot of managers do get on with agents, they'll have a small select group who they trust, and if anyone tries to come into that circle they'll be a bit wary, which is fair enough. I would be.

"Sir Alex said it's the fault of agents, which probably to a degree sometimes it is, but you can't think that of every agent, every agency is different .

"It might be Wayne Rooney's agent who's got him the ridiculous amount of money he has, he probably did play a big part, but not all agents are going to be like that.

"One day I'd like to be a Premier League agent, and the question to my player wouldn't be about money, it would be 'Where do you want to play football?'

"I'd like to think that in the years I'd been doing it, I'd have created a good reputation and managers would know they could trust me."

Back to the issue of being a woman in a male-dominated environment, which for an attractive 24-year-old visiting clubs, watching matches and talking with young men with time and money on their hands, poses another dilemma.

"You have to be strong, you get a lot of c**p thrown at you,

but being a woman can be advantageous in the football industry," she said.

"I think I can use it (she says of her appeal). If you can't, there's something wrong with you.

"But I know what young footballers are like. If you try

and chat to them, they'll start saying things in texts and you have to say, 'Hang on a minute'.

"The ones who actually come to the meetings you know are serious about a business partnership. I know about footballers' personalities, I know how to handle them, and give a little back.

"I sometimes get the feeling when I walk into a boardroom the men think I'm somebody's secretary or there to make a cup of tea, but as soon as I start talking they realise I know what I'm talking about.

"I actually prefer it that people underestimate me a little bit. They think I'll be a walk over.

"Women are good agents because they can do things differently, they can argue without shouting. A lot of men storm into things, with tunnel vision. Women can go about it differently, and be a little conniving really."

WOMEN WORKING IN FOOTBALL

Karren Brady was the first female managing director of a football club when she took over at Birmingham City FC in March 1993. She was 23 years-old. She left in October 2009 and in the same month was appointed chairman to the 2018 World Cup advisory board. In January, she was appointed vice-chairman of West Ham United.

Jacqui Oatley was the first woman to commentate on a televised football match in 2007. The decision caused much debate and a storm of protest.

Delia Smith and her husband Michael Wynn Jones joined the board of Norwich City FC in 1996 before becoming majority shareholders in the club.