Bridget Fallowfield has run her agency from her spare bedroom in Exeter for over twenty years, representing eleven players across the Alliance Semi-Pro tier, including Torquay Gulls midfielder Ethan Smith, eighteen.
She still insists on a home visit and a conversation with the family before signing any player under twenty, takes a smaller cut than any agency operating above her level, and has turned down three buyout offers from larger London firms over the years — the most recent, and largest, just this month.
“I've watched what happens to eighteen-year-olds who get handed to an agency that's never met their mum,” she says. “I'm not doing that to mine.”
Ethan says he found out about the latest offer secondhand, weeks after Bridget turned it down without mentioning it to him. He says that, more than anything else, is why he trusts her.