Football Education On the Pitch Spring Term Stockport County

On the pitch, our Boys and Girls Player Pathway teams have been making one last push before the end of term. This includes a number of training sessions, the final games of the season, and the opportunity to play on the pitch at Edgeley Park.

The Sports Career Pathway students have gained vital experience, delivering coaching sessions for local primary schools at Edgeley Park, and travelled to Carrington for a tour of the analysis facilities.

We also caught up with Lead Coach Richard Chapman to discuss his first year at Stockport Sports Village, the current Football Education set-up and much more.

Player Pathway

The first-year players were presented the opportunity to take part in an in-house tournament at Edgeley Park. This has become an annual event for the first-year students, with each squad, including our brand-new girls team, taking part.

Rick Chapman’s first-year team won the AOC Invitational B league this season, following a string of impressive performances. Tony Coyne’s first-year team also won their respective league this season, a tremendous effort from both squads in their first year at Stockport Sports Village.

Sports Career Pathway

Our Sports Career Pathway Coaching students delivered training sessions for a number of local primary schools on the pitch at Edgeley Park. This capped off a promising first year of coaching sessions, planned and delivered entirely by our students to primary school teams.

The Analysis students, as part of the Sports Career Pathway, were presented with the opportunity to visit Carrington. The students were taken onto the training pitch by Lead Academy Analyst Jack Hodnett, where they viewed the facilities, before heading into the analysis room to deliver a mock-analysis session.

Speaking on a successful season at the Football Education, we caught up with Lead Coach Richard Chapman:

Rick, can you give us an overview of your role at the Football Education?

My role is to oversee the day-to-day running of football. I oversee the coaches, the curriculum and everything from a football perspective.

I work underneath Michael Raynes, who oversees the whole football aspect of the Football Education, but my role focuses on the day-to-day running. I make sure that the players and coaches have got everything that they need, and make sure that we keep to our high standards that we expect here.

This is your first year at the Football Education. Just how have you found it?

I’ve loved it. I think sometimes with BTEC programmes there’s a bit of scepticism, but the way the Club runs this programme is second-to-none. The attention to detail, the license that I have to go make it what it needs to be, and what I feel it needs to be is backed all the time by the club.

I’ve absolutely loved every minute of it. The players have been great. I’ve met so many new people and coming from the Welsh system to the English system, it’s completely opened my eyes up to how good the talent is around the English game and how good it is in a college programme.

The standard of the college programme is excellent as well. It’s been really, really good.

Your first-year team won the league this season, just how did that feel from your perspective?

Brilliant. I’m made up for them because, and I don’t think they’ll mind me saying this, they were a tough group at the start of the year.

It’s always a tough group. That’s that sort of team because they’re below the elite team,  but they’re the next team in line. They’ve all got something that probably shows they should be in the elite setting. To try and manage that group can be really difficult, but they’ve really bought into what we do.

They’re one of the better sides education-wise, and they’re also a great team on the pitch. They’ve come together as such a tight group. At the start of the year, they weren’t really friends, none of them really had friendship groups in there, and now they’re really tight. They’re always wanting to go out together.

So, it’s been great to win the league and that shines a light on how good they are. However, for me, from a coach’s perspective, it’s been much better to see their personal development and their development as a group of people into a group of friends and a real tight knit group. That’s been the most positive thing for me, really.

How impressed have you been with the facilities at SSV?

They’re great, aren’t they? They’re great here. I go to a lot of clubs for away matches within the English pyramid and nowhere is better than this place.

We’ve got 10 pitches. We’ve got two gyms to use. We’ve got eight classrooms. Offices everywhere. Everything is set up like a proper football club. There’s probably a lot of football clubs that operate their academies at worse facilities than this.

The second-year players travelled to Spain this season, the first tour that they’ve ever been on for the Football Education. What experiences have they gained from that trip?

I think the biggest one I suppose is how well they’ve all got on and how tight they’ve become. Three different teams had gone together.

The players out of each of those three teams have gone together, come back and they’re like best mates. They chat about it and you can tell how much it’s impacted them because that’s all they talk about is ‘remember this in Spain’, and I think for the coaches and teachers that went as well, they’ve become really tight. It’s just brought everybody together.

The experiences they get there, and this is something that we strive for at the Club, is making and creating lifelong memories for the players. We want to create something they can look back on at their time at Stockport County and have a real positive influence on their life.

When they bump into these people, the friends that they’ve made, they can always look back at their time here. As well as obviously playing on unbelievable pitches, nice weather and all the playing side of it, but from a ‘what have they gained from it’ viewpoint, I think the lifelong memories would be the big one.

Your second-year player, Gabe Vanterpool, was called up for St. Kitts-Nevis this season, playing in the U20s CONCACAF Championship and then against San Marino twice for the first-team, how did that feel from your point of view to see one of your players go off on international duty?

Really proud from a coaching perspective. Gabe is an outstanding player. His technical ability is brilliant and right up there with the best. He’s really unlucky not to get a scholarship somewhere. When he came into us compared to where he is now, obviously leaving us as a second year, that just opened his doors right up for his exit pathway and where he looks to go.

He’s had lots of interest from different clubs, but to see any player called up for their national team is incredible. I don’t think many Football Education programmes have players that have called up to the national team. For him to go to the U20s, first of all, which is a step up for him because he’s an U18 is massive, but then to do so well and get called up to the men’s first team is unbelievable really.

I suppose for me it is a sense of pride. I’m so happy for him and I hope it continues. I hope he continues his football development outside of Stockport County, because wherever he goes on to next so that he can continue his international career. I think he’s got a bright, bright future in front of him.

The Football Education hosted an U19 exit pathway game, the first time we’ve ever hosted an event like this. How did that go?

I thought it was excellent. It was well run, really well structured. I’ve had lots of positive feedback from the coaches and scouts that came in, that the standard of football on display that day was brilliant.

They really showcased what they can do on and hopefully a lot of the managers will come back with feedback. We’ve had a lot of initial contact, where they want players’ details and they want us to pass that on. County’s partnership with Routes CV builder is a really easy way for us to be able to send all of their details over, so they can have the full background in terms of education pathway, in terms of a player’s pathway, and also their statistics from all the testing that we’ve done over the years.

That really sells our players as an individual, rather than I just passing over a phone number. That’s something we’ve tried to do, I’m looking forward to seeing where they go from there. I’ll be regular contact with all the coaches that came to the events that asked for details to try and make sure that those players are developing well and making sure that they go on to, not only trial at these clubs, but to sign and play.

If they don’t sign, we’ll make sure that we’re there to support the players off the back of that, to enhance their careers and development.

What can we expect for next year?

There’s lots of exciting things going on for next year. We have a new intake of first years. We will have a little restructure and a reshuffle with the second-years and move them around into different teams.

I think the most exciting thing from a club perspective is that this is the first time we’ve had a girls programme. Next year will be the first time we’ve been able, in three years, to have a full-time Girls Player Pathway here. It’ll be in its infancy and we’ll only have one team, but over the years we hope to develop that into a bigger programme to match the Boys Player Pathway.

The new intake of students that are coming in, that the other members of staff lead on with the Sports Career Pathway. The analysts, strength and conditioning coaches, the sports therapists, the sports rehab and the coaching pathway, which will show we’re holistically looking after every part of the football pyramid. It shows that every aspect of the game is covered here.

Hopefully we can just keep growing and keep getting bigger and better.