Football has always been a huge passion of mine, and a huge influence on my life. Growing up I played every day after school, come rain or shine. During those grey, rain sodden days I would go home for dinner smothered from head to toe in mud from diving around a goalmouth, with my mother asking if I had won the “who can get the muddiest” contest. That was it in a tiny, sleepy little hamlet like mine – a pair of square wooden goal posts to keep kids entertained post-school hours.
So I decided to give up the playing side of the game in my late twenties, after various trials and scouting from the likes of Brighton, West Ham and Nottingham Forest in my teens, injuries had taken their toll. However I would never leave the game completely. It has always been an ambition of mine to get as high up the football ladder as I possibly can, so I decided my next step was coaching.
In case you’ve never looked into it before, getting on to an FA Level 1 Coaching course is expensive. This is an FA who started an enquiry after the disastrous tournaments of 2010, 2012 & 2014 into why there weren’t many English coaches, in comparison with our European neighbours of significantly lower populations. The fact that a Level 1 course is in excess of £200 is a damn good place to start – something that I brought up with the tutor during the course, which I will go into more detail with later.
Luckily I managed to get involved with a club through my 5 year old son, which meant the club would subsidise the cost, but I was with candidates who had to fork out the cost by themselves; not an enviable task. The course was set over four days spreading across four weekends, and due to my club’s training on a Saturday morning, I couldn’t implement some of the ideas straight away. That was probably the main takeaway I gained from the course – ideas, and different practices from the other coaches, including the tutor who was a coach at Portsmouth FC. The course itself is split into half theory and half practical, with the practical part being quite endurance dependant; taking part in the demonstration from the tutor which could take some time, and then being a part of 17 other sessions from the other candidates – not the best idea for a group containing some more elderly folk…
Anyway, I thought I would take the opportunity to question the FA’s ethos, and question their much publicised decisions, aiming to get this FA coach to admit their wrongdoings. As I mentioned earlier; the price of the coaching course, when the FA publicly called for an inquest into the lack of British coaches. The answer? “I don’t know” followed by a quiet agreement with what I claimed. The next question – what ever happened to the “panel” that Greg Dyke put together for the inquest into English football, and the dossier they were supposed to release as a result?
This was where the FA tutor confirmed what most of us think anyway: “A lot of the time the FA will say these things to make it look like they are doing the right thing, but nothing ever really happens”.
Boom, there it was, clarification that even the FA themselves don’t believe in this “FA ethos”, which also harps back to “why are we paying £200 for this course then, and even more the further FA qualifications?!”
I found it a quite shocking and amusing that these FA Tutors who are teaching us the ‘FA Ethos’ had no faith in the FA themselves. A revelation that clearly means the FA themselves aren’t sold on their own ideas and the changes they have made to grass roots football since the embarrassment of the last few football tournaments.
In the coming months I will be working further with FA coaches and coaches from different backgrounds with different ideas, as well as completing further qualifications. This should be an interesting journey.
The Man Club 