Memoirs of a Once Aspiring Football Coach
Like many young people, I dreamed of working in football. I applied for some jobs coaching teams within my local youth league but was told I lacked experience. Who would have thought that a 14-year old lacked experience, hey? By age 15, I had created my own team. Over the course of a year, I recruited enough of my school friends from other teams to enter a side into the Colchester and district U16s league. The team I created was called Woolwich Wanderers FC, after the road I lived on at the time. Whilst most kids were getting ready for their GCSEs, I was pounding the streets talking to local business owners about sponsoring the team and buying kits/training equipment etc. After a few months, school was just a place to organise training, decide line-ups and tactics, and recruit new players. I don’t recall how we did in our first season, but we wen’t into a second moving up into men’s football. At the time, I was the youngest person to ever manage a team in the league. Annual General Meetings were held in a bar and my mum had to accompany me as otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed in.
After our GCSEs, many of us moved onto different things. Some A-levels locally, others to a college in Colchester, more still went into employment. I tried the former for a few months and then decided to go for the latter. By the end of our second season, Woolwich Wanderers had run its course. By this time I was working as a community coach for Ipswich Town FC and had gone back into education completing a Diploma in Sports Coaching. A few afternoons a week, I would help out with Ipswich Town’s after school clubs. I was also working full-time in hospitality and later in retail. After finishing my diploma, I landed a full-time job with Colchester United working in their community programme. The work was good but the pay was lousy. Eventually, I moved to a company called Premier Sports and essentially did the same job for slightly better pay. I was doing my badges at the same time and generally doing okay in my development.
This is a ten year journey and I don’t wish to bore you with the monotony of day-to-day life so I’ll skip ahead. After a while, the realities of working as a community coach were vastly different from my dream of managing a team. I was essentially a poorly paid teaching assistant/babysitter and was growing weary of the lack of progression pathways. The year before, I had applied to coach in the US but couldn’t go due to not having the required qualifications at the time. Out of the blue one day the following year, I got a call from a recruiter who asked me if I could be on a flight to New York within a month to take up the role of Player Development Officer in Hebron (Connecticut) for Major League Soccer. I jumped at it and off I went.
The one kink in my plan to run off to the US forever was that I had met a girl three months earlier who I really liked. We spoke every couple of days for the initial four months I was out there. The plan was that I would return to the UK after the fall season had ended and then I would go out again in the New Year. I loved every minute of my time in the US, but you probably know how this goes. I came back to the UK and we had another four or five months together. By the time I could have gone back, me and my now wife of 14-years and mother of my two sons were going steady. She didn’t want to leave her job in a PR firm or her family, so we stayed.
After my time in the US, I decided to create my own coaching company. Whilst in the US, I came across a sport called futsal and used this as the basis for my company. The Nike Joga Bonita adverts then came along a few months later and my company was a hit. I was coaching up to 50 kids a session and had to take on staff to help. I expanded into different areas and was working in ten schools. Over time, the student numbers plateaued at a more typical 15–25 per class.
By now, my then girlfriend and I were looking to get a mortgage. My old boss at Premier Sport had heard about my business and wanted to have a meeting. I explained that I wanted to get a mortgage and he made me an offer for the business and offered me a job as an Area Coordinator. Foolishly, I took it and handed over my business to him. After six months, he made me redundant. I was livid. Everything I had worked over two years was gone. In an unlikely twist, however, it was probably for the best. When one of the schools I had been working for heard that I was being made redundant, they created a job for me as an ‘unqualified teacher’. I was also coaching Witham Town’s Conference Youth side and had started my UEFA B Licence. It was at the school that I was first encouraged to go into teaching by the Head Teacher. Ofsted had sent an inspector who had watched me teaching and the feedback was highly positive. I was advised in no uncertain terms that I should “go and get a degree” so I could become a qualified teacher. I still harboured hopes of making it in coaching, so I decided to do a degree in Psychology and Childhood Development. The rest is history, as they say. I enjoyed research and Higher Education and haven’t left since (achieving my doctorate in 2015 and numerous jobs along the way).
Why have you shared this story, I hear you ask. Is it more navel gazing as some have described my published paper on this topic that documents the period in between what I’ve written here and finishing my PhD? Maybe. I’m a sharer and I find this type of writing useful for a number of reasons (therapy, to record my history etc.). Someone out there might also read and be impressed by my approach to tackling problems. Who knows. I also like to hope sharing might help some of the 15,000 or so sport science graduates we churn out as a nation each year who may find themselves walking a similar path. I don’t really think my story is that unusual. Yes, there are a few things that are different, but by and large, it’s a path that many of the guys I worked with at Colchester United, Ipswich Town, Premier Sport, Witham Town have trodden to some degree or another. It is really a tale of love, adventure, and trusting in the future. I hope everyone can relate to this in some way.
P.s., Some of this happened up to 24-years ago and things get foggy over time. I’m still in touch with a lot of my former players and the coaches I worked with so if you’re reading and can correct anything, feel free :)
