I’m delighted to speak with Allan Steele this week. Allan has held many positions in football including Director of Football, Technical Lead, Academy Manager in the Premier League and pro-licence coach.  Allan was Director of Football at Forest Green Rovers Football Club. Previously he held roles at Brentford Football Club – as B Team Technical Lead and Assistant Coach, and as Education and Welfare Manager and Academy Coach. Allan and I discuss his coaching and leadership experiences and approaches having worked across three different footballing cultures ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with coach educator and coach, Dr Noel Dempsey this week. Noel is a Senior Lecturer at the University Campus of Football Business (UCFB). UCFB is dedicated to the delivery of ground-breaking undergraduate degree programmes in the football and sports industry. Noel is a UEFA A Licence and has coached in range of settings, including grassroots, academy, non-league. Noel previously coached at Manchester City Football Club, The English FA for 4 years and Burnley football club coach. We discuss a range of coaching topics and Noel shares his experiences as a coach and coach de ..read more

I speak with Olivia Bramley and Dr Laura Healy in this episode. Olivia is a PhD student at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) with an interest in positive sporting environments and experiences. Olivia completed her BSc in Sports and Exercise Science at Nottingham Trent University where she was also Women's Football Club President, Women's Football Media and Communications Officer and Women's Football First team player. Olivia has just returned to the UK to play for the Women’s Championship Team, Durham. Laura is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Nottingham T ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Sarah Green this week. Sarah is a UEFA A Licence Coach, coach developer and MSc student who is passionate about developing people. Sarah is Performance Coach Developer at England Netball where she works with coaches in the performance pathway (Roses Academy & Franchise Pathways) providing individualised support to develop their coaching practice and behaviours. Sarah also supports potential performance coaches through a coach development programme. Sarah is also Head of Performance at Derby County Women’s Football Club Previously, Sarah worked at The FA for 11 y ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Jon Mackey this week. Jon is High Performance Director for Canoeing Ireland – managing the Olympic programme across two Olympic sports: canoe slalom and canoe sprint. Jon is also national coach for ring sports (all full contact disciplines) and lead of the coach development program. Jon’s interests revolve around research in coaching, skill acquisition and decision making, exercise science, physiology and leadership. He has a master’s degree in Coaching and Performance Science and is currently studying a Doctoral degree in Elite Performance in Sport at Dublin City U ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with David Horrocks this week. David is a coach educator and formerly head of R and D and part of the senior management at Manchester United Football Club. Over the years, David has engaged with many organisations such as British Cycling, Borussia Dortmund, The DFB, Milwaukee Bucks, Cricket Australia, London School of Contemporary Dance, Red Bull, and Inter Miami among others. David is also a consultant to Findel Education, Veo Technologies, Carleton University Canada, and Inspire Sports and is currently running an employee health and wellbeing program for up to 6000 wor ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Katie Crawford this week. Katie and I discuss how coaches can facilitate teamwork within their teams.   Katie is a PhD student at the University of Bath. As part of Katie’s PhD research, she led a paper entitled “Coaching teamwork: Team sport athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions of how coaches facilitate teamwork” along with Dr Rachel Arnold, Carly McKay and Dr Desmond McEwan. The study explored how team sport coaches might facilitate teamwork within their teams. The study was based on interviews with coaches and athletes and identified how coaches utilize the fo ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Josh Frost this week. Josh is a PhD research student at The University of Melbourne. His research is also affiliated with the Elite Sports and Mental Health Centre at Orygen, a not-for-profit Youth Mental Health Centre located in Melbourne. The centre conducts research with athletes, coaches and high-performance support staff to find ways to better support elite athletes. In this episode Josh and I discuss a paper he led entitled “The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review” which examined the current body of evidence to explore what is kno ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Karin Hägglund this week. Karin is a Former Swedish National team coach and National team athlete in karate. She is a five-time Swedish champion and three-time Nordic karate champion. Karin now researches how we can maintain well-being and health while performing at a high level over time. She is a PhD-student in Sustainable High-performance Coaching at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. Karin is former editor and writer for the magazine FLOW published by the Swedish Sports Psychology Association and was a board member of the Swedish Sports Psychology ..read more

I’m delighted to speak with Jen Harris this week. Jen is an expert in the field of parenting in youth sport. As the mother of a child athlete Jen was struck how little help there is for parents and decided to help change this. She undertook a Masters degree in Sport Psychology, the focus of which was parenting in youth sport. For her dissertation she created the Super-P Approach; an easy to teach parental communication style which can significantly reduce worry levels in child athletes. Jen is now completing her PhD at The University of Edinburgh to extend the research into her Super-P Ap ..read more