I believe our partnership with Center Parcs is a match made in heaven! Two like-minded organisations coming together to deliver memorable experiences to both children and families to create memories that will last a lifetime. I love Center Parcs and have been going for years from way back to when my children were toddlers to now when they are young adults and my wife and children have as much fun there now as we did 20 years ago! ‌ It was on a visit there some four years ago now not long after coming on board with the Football Fun Factory while playing and winning, I may add a game of short te ..read more

I absolutely love Friday’s I always have and am pretty sure I always will! As a footballer I used to love training on a Friday preparing for the next day’s game and then go to bed full of excitement in anticipation of running out on the pitch the next day! As a football coach I used to enjoy planning and picking my team for the next day’s fixture looking forward to pitting my wits tactically against the opposition. Now these days Friday’s are slightly different working from Football Fun Factory HQ and I love them more than ever. Now every day at the FFF things are pretty fu ..read more

What a trip! In last week’s blog I spoke about my excitement about our trip over to Spain as a Head Office team and it certainly didn’t disappoint. It really was an inspiring few days in the sun which has left the team refreshed and rejuvenated to attack the rest of the year which is set to be epic with so much going on at The FFF. We most definitely crammed lots of work into the trip and the change of scenery and weather definitely helped! On arrival we filmed some epic content with Oli and Adam which I’m sure you’ll see plenty of in the coming weeks as the guys documented ..read more

Well maybe not quite as it is a work trip, but I’m still super excited as the FFF Head Office team are off to Spain this weekend for some warm weather training! It’s set to be a brilliant trip with a change of scenery to regroup, team build and in typical FFF style capture a huge amount of content. It’s been an extremely busy first four months of the year so I’m sure it will be a welcome break from the usual day to day activities to come back refreshed, revitalized ready for another extremely busy summer! ‌ Since coming onboard with the Football Fun Factory I’ve been lucky enough to go on a nu ..read more

Last July we held our inaugural franchise conference, this event saw us bring together a number of our FFF Head Coaches for a day of learnings and celebration. Working within a franchise organisation means we don’t get together as a team all that often which made this day so special. It was an absolute joy catching up with so many like-minded people all with a huge passion for football coaching and child development to share experiences and learn from each other. ‌ The day took a heck of a lot of planning from the Head Office team as of course we wanted to make the day as beneficial and speci ..read more

What’s all this about football introducing a new Blue Card that will see players sin-binned for ten minutes if they receive one? At the FFF we’ve been dishing out blue cards for years for very different reasons! At every one of our sessions, our Head Coaches hand out these cards to the child or children who have displayed the most fantastic human qualities throughout the football session, this could be for sportsmanship, encouragement, or enthusiasm, and certainly won’t result in them being sent off the pitch for ten minutes! ‌ I’m not too keen on this new concept planned for professional foot ..read more

When my football career came to an end it brought about great personal challenges accepting my playing career was at an end. To help get over this I was encouraged to write down my thoughts and feelings, I decided to do this in the form of a letter. I stumbled across this letter on my laptop and thought I would share it in this week’s blog, reading back through this enlightened me and showed that even our greatest challenges give us the opportunity to develop and progress in life when at the time it may not feel that way. Dear football, I wanted to write this letter to let you know that even t ..read more

Now I love football, always have and I’m quite sure always will but there are areas of the game that I look at with despair and feel it’s not good enough. One such aspect is the football coaching industry and the prospects of hugely talented and passionate football coaches. It’s an industry where demand vastly outweighs opportunity and so many don’t have the chance to follow their dream and do something they love, and even for those that do, the reality of working full time in football is often not what they were expecting it to be. I was one of those coaches, the perceived ‘lucky ones’ but it ..read more

You probably don’t need me to tell you that the Football Fun Factory is hard to ignore on social media, we are all of it! The reason for this is because we want to share our journey and what we are all about because to be completely honest we think it’s pretty epic! I mean who doesn’t agree with children playing football in a pressure-free environment, learning valuable life skills and falling in love with the game we all adore! We are incredibly grateful for all the incredible support we have received along the way from those who have followed our journey through our social media channels. Ev ..read more

I know you probably won’t believe this but I very often find it really hard talking about my football career, I get a little awkward and am always very conscious of what other people think, getting worried that I will be perceived as big-headed and arrogant. But once I get going it feels quite natural and straightforward as I’m talking about the subject I know most about, me! Over the past few years, I’ve delivered a few talks in both corporate and educational settings about my career in football, some of the challenges I encountered and the lessons I learnt along the way. When I have done thi ..read more