THROWBACK THURSDAY | Defender Charlie Mitchell Leads Team Hawaii As Player-Coach

Charlie Mitchell admitted he didn’t have much of a choice when it came to where he would play after suiting up for the New York Cosmos in the 1976 NASL season. That was OK for the Scotland native, though, because he couldn’t have ended up in a better place. 

“New York wanted to trade me, and Hawaii was the first team to come in and offer me a contract, so myself and Brian Tinnion took advantage of that,” Mitchell told NASL.com. “It seems like a Disney story to say we picked Hawaii, but Hawaii really picked us.”

Team Hawaii featured in the 1977 NASL season, playing its matches at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. While it was easy to be wowed by the surroundings of the islands – the beaches, sun, and surf – it was the soccer culture that he saw as the biggest takeaway.

“The local community was really into it,” he said. “Their local soccer community is pretty big, and this was in 1977. The colleges were into it, and the local soccer people were really supportive.”

Had Team Hawaii been able to immerse itself deeper into the community with a longer stay, Mitchell believes the support would have only grown further. After the ’77 season, the club moved to Tulsa to become the Roughnecks.

“It’s not like they wouldn’t have supported the soccer had it been there a couple of more years,” he said.

The travel, however, was one of the determining factors. Clubs would face long travel times to get to the island, usually after already doing a West Coast swing. Team Hawaii would do the same, playing matches in a region in bulk.

“When we played the games, we would leave Hawaii and stay on the mainland for four or five games – a couple on the East Coast and a couple on the West Coast,” Mitchell said.

Playing in Hawaii, while it presented some issues, was certainly a home-field advantage.

“It was definitely an advantage,” Mitchell said. “The players didn’t want to come to the island and sit in a room and watch a show on television.

Mitchell, of course, was tasked with keeping the players focused, as he became the head coach midway through the season in a player-coach capacity. Hubert Vogelsinger, who started the season as the boss, got ill and was unable to continue in the role.

“Ward Lay [Jr.] was the owner of the team at the time and I was the captain, and he asked me if I would be interested in coaching the team for the rest of the season,” Mitchell explained.

“I said, ‘I’m not too sure I want to get into coaching yet,’ and he said, ‘If you don’t take it, someone might come in and not like you,’ so I said, ‘OK, Ward, I’ll take it.’ That was my introduction to my coaching career. I took it for the second half of the year as a player-coach.”

Having the respect as a captain already, Mitchell noted he didn’t change much from what he was already doing. The only difference was he would have to pick the team to play each week.

On the pitch, the club couldn’t quite put it all together, though, finishing 11-15 and missing out on a postseason berth. With the team only having one season to jell - and several players on loan from English club West Ham United - Mitchell believed a longer run together would have turned out better results.

“It was a team thrown together at the last minute, and we got some decent results, but we needed some more time to put a really good program together,” he said.

Ultimately, it proved to be an important step for Mitchell. It was his first test as a coach (he later coached the Roughnecks) and it allowed him to enjoy everything Hawaii had to offer.

Not bad for someone who didn’t have a choice.