‘She was one of my best signings, no question’ Vic Akers talks to Arseblog News about Julie Fleeting

On this day in 2007, Arsenal Ladies secured a 1-0 aggregate win over Umea to win the UEFA Women’s Champions League. You can read our exclusive interview with Vic Akers about that triumph here). One of the key players in that success was Gunners forward Julie Fleeting.

Fleeting scored an incredible 130 goals in 141 appearances for the club, as well as notching 116 times for Scotland in 121 caps. I ask the man who brought her to the club, Vic Akers, where Julie ranks in the players that he has coached. “She was in the top echelons of all the forwards I managed.” Vic managed the likes of Kelly Smith and Marieanne Spacey.

“Marieanne was an outstanding footballer and she scored great goals,” Vic continues. “Especially from distance, she had a real strike on her. Julie was in that bracket. Her record shows that. At international level she did it too and, with respect to Scotland, they weren’t the strongest group at that time and she still had nearly a goal a game for them. She was one of my best signings for sure.”

Fleeting had a full-time job as a PE teacher in Scotland, so she flew to England every Sunday to play with the team but never trained with them. It was an unusual arrangement and one that belongs to an era of semi-professionalism at the elite level of women’s football. “I know she felt a bit strange doing that but it was the only way we could get her to play for us and we were prepared to do it,” Akers points out. “It was difficult but it worked for us and she told me that she loved every minute.”

Arsenal were one of the few English teams to take their women’s team seriously at the time and for them to sign off on such an expense for the women’s team was unique. “David (Dein) was such a support for me, he went to the board and got the support for us from Ken Friar, who was also good support for me. Ken is a lovely man and David made sure we got that through, he knew the importance of having Julie in the group. We spoke about it a lot. I was very fortunate to have her and the backing of the club.”

One of Fleeting’s crowning achievements arrived in the 2004 FA Cup Final at Loftus Road where she scored a hat-trick which, on its own, is impressive enough. More so when you realise that she played for Scotland against Germany 24 hours earlier and came off with a dead leg. “That was Julie, that was how she was,” Vic laughs. “When I said to her ‘how do you feel?’ She said, ‘I’ll be alright.’ I asked if she was sure because the last thing I wanted to do was for her to get injured.

“She just said she could play and we agreed we’d take her off at the first sign that she couldn’t. She scored a hat-trick, which was unbelievable really.” Fleeting’s arrangement of flying from Scotland every Sunday morning only to return every Sunday evening, often being substituted early in away matches so she would not miss her flight, was tough. However, Akers never had any doubt that Fleeting would adjust.

“She is a lovely girl from a lovely family and she is still the same person. I saw her play in a charity game a couple of years back and she still had all the same instincts for the game. She was a proper player!” You can watch a documentary on Julie’s career on the BBC iPlayer (available until 9th May) which Vic contributed to. I ask him how happy he was to be asked to contribute to a documentary about one of his best players given how little footage and recognition there is of players from his era.

“It was the second one I had done in quick succession, there was another one on Jayne Ludlow available here until 16th May). They were both great documentaries because they really show you what the game was during that time. Without masses of money, we accumulated most of the top players in the British Isles. At one point, we had the captains of four of those countries in the same team- Jayne Ludlow (Wales), Ciara Grant (Republic of Ireland), Faye White (England) and Julie Fleeting (Scotland). That tells you about the talent in that group.”

We spoke to Julie earlier this month on the Arsenal Women Arsecast and you can find that episode here. The documentary about Julie is available here until 15th May.