Coaching

Every coach at this club was once a parent standing on the side of a pitch thinking somebody ought to do something. Almost none of them had coached before. That is not a gap we tolerate, it is the normal route in.

What the club pays for

If you want to coach here, the club funds you to Introduction to Coaching, which is the FA's Level 1. That is not a contribution towards it. It is the whole thing, and it covers four separate pieces:

• Your DBS check
  The background check every adult working with children must hold. Arranged and paid for by the club.
• Safeguarding Children in Football
  The FA course on keeping children safe. Non-negotiable, and rightly so.
• Introduction to Football
  The FA's entry coaching qualification. How to run a session that children enjoy and learn from.
• First aid
  What to do when somebody goes down and everyone looks at you.

You pay nothing. There is no clawback, no minimum number of seasons, and nothing to sign that ties you in. If you do the course and discover it is not for you, that is a reasonable outcome and we would rather you found out than spent a year dreading Tuesdays.

Who can do it

Anyone from 14 upwards. That is deliberate. A fifteen year old who has played here since they were seven often knows more about running a session for Under 8s than an adult who has never done it, and helping with a younger team is one of the best reasons we have found for a teenager to stay at the club when their own football gets complicated.

Younger coaches are always supported by a DBS checked adult and are never left responsible for a group on their own.

What it actually takes

About an hour a week, plus a match most Saturdays if you are helping with a league team. Development sessions on a Friday are an hour and that is the whole commitment.

You do not need to have been a good player. You need to be reliable, to be reasonably calm when twelve children are all talking at once, and to be willing to be quite bad at it for a few weeks.