Sports Academy

Kevin Donovan:  Now a UEFA A licence coach after retiring from a 17-year career as a professional footballer playing over 500 league games for Huddersfield Town, West Bromwich Albion, Grimsby Town and Barnsley.

Oliver Scanlon: Oli is a Level 1 coach and ex-student first team player.

Our aim is to improve each individual that joins and help them become a better player by providing a safe and positive environment to play and train in. We help you understand the importance of working in a team whilst improving your own individual ability.

All sessions will be delivered by UEFA qualified coaches and will be relevant and realistic to the game. Sessions will be challenging for individuals, units, and the team. Our aim is to challenge the players with as many game-related experiences as possible. The players will be central to the sessions and the players will be given their chance to express their opinions and thoughts.

As a college, we work on our weaknesses and plan sessions to improve on past performances. At the end of games and through match analysis we gain feedback from our players on how they think the game went. As coaches, we will do a post-match review on areas we believe need to be addressed. Through this, we will identify weaknesses in our performance and plan sessions to improve. We will also use analysis in the form of Key performance indicators in order to check the players’ understanding of previous sessions.

We will support our performances via match analysis. We will video all of our games that will allow us to look at our strengths and weaknesses as a team and as individuals. The players will be given the opportunity to analyse their individual performances on a weekly basis as part of their college studies.

3 training sessions per week held at Leeds Rd playing fields on the state of the art outdoor and indoor 3G pitches. Strength and conditioning sessions in our very own fantastically equipped gym with a fully qualified S&C coach. Individual programmes will be given to each student to follow outside of college hours. The students have access to the gym for free.

Along with the S&C sessions the students will be given nutritional advice along with injury prevention programmes.

New to this season will be a video analysis session. The time in the classroom will be for the students to watch video footage of games they have played in and then to discuss relevant points from what they have seen, hopefully to take onto the pitch to help them develop and improve. It will also be used to highlight positive things they have done during the games both individually and as a team.

The college will be running 3 teams again this year in the very competitive AOC college leagues. These matches all take place on Wednesday afternoons. Home matches take place at Leeds Rd playing fields on the 3G pitch. For away matches, transport is always provided to and from the game. These games give the players opportunity to play against like minded colleges with the chance to win promotion from their respective leagues.

This season we are looking to set up some games against Pro and Semi clubs, this will give the students a chance to play against the very best players at their age level.

We plan to take a group of students away to Spain to experience a once in a lifetime 2-week tour of Valencia. This really is a fantastic opportunity to train, play matches and also visit the iconic Mestalla stadium, home of Valencia FC. During this funded tour the students get chance to learn new skills including cooking, learning the language and also delivering coaching sessions to children in disability groups in Valencia. This really is an experience that our previous students have loved.

Students will have the opportunity to gain the very valuable Level 1 football coaching award. Once passed it can be used to find paid coaching opportunities with numerous coaching and sporting companies.