He's spent the past few months travelling through Europe and soaking up as much football knowledge as possible en route to joining the Illawarra Stingrays.
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The Stingrays have announced Bruce Tilt is the club's Women's National Premier League One head coach in 2020 and he's ready for the challenge ahead.
While reaching the NPL1 finals is near the top of Tilt's priority list, he is also keen to spend his time developing the club's junior girls.
"I spent the past couple of months overseas in Italy, England, Portugal and Spain, looking at football, what they're doing and how it's progressing," Tilt said.
"What I was looking for was, with the men's and boys programs, what are they doing differently to the girls? And what I'm finding now in Europe is they're not doing a lot different. They're now starting to say, the girls are athletes, they can run, dribble and pass. It's all much the same so the programs are becoming closer aligned.
"A lot of our girls teams here in NSW play against boys teams and the gap's getting closer and closer. I think that's how our program is going to change this year. We're going to do more things that maybe the boys would do, but the girls might have shied off before."
Tilt takes over the reins from former Socceroo Scott Chipperfield. Tilt has more than 40 years of coaching experience and his achievements include running the Ultimate Fiji Soccer Cup and being involved in the game at a state and national level.
Tilt spent the past two seasons coaching Fernhill in the Illawarra Premier League.
"I found myself out of a job at the end of last season and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do," he said.
"The Stingrays approached me about getting involved with the girls again. I do a lot of work with the younger girls, we run a tournament in Fiji and a program over there every year which has been going about 10 years now. So I knew a lot about the younger girls coming through at the Stingrays and thought it was a great opportunity to get involved with them on the park every week."
In 2020, Tilt is ready for the NPL challenge - and he believes the Stingrays will be a strong contender.
"The Stingrays are a settled side, some of the girls have been here for a number of years now. They've earned their spots and want to hold their spots," he said.
"We've [also] brought up some girls from the lower ranks and we're mixing them in with the more senior players. When you're looking at some of the new depth coming through, it's very exciting for the Stingrays. It's something they look up to, they want to play first grade with girls who play in the W-League.
"The Stingrays have been in finals forever, they enjoy being in finals. And it's going to be no different for me - I want to be back up there in the finals."
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