BA (Hons) Community Football Coaching

Chris French: As a former student, who went through the degree program here, and worked my way through up Devon County FA employment structure, now the County Development Manager, realize how important it is to have young people and students work in the community, but also giving them opportunities to have something else in their CV. There are a number of students graduating university now with the same sort of degree, whether it's sports development, or football development.

And actually, as an employer, we're looking for what they've done outside of their degree, where they've taking their studies, and where they've been implementing their studies in the community, giving that bit of volunteering actually makes them standout in their CV. So we wanted to give people in sport, with a passion for football, the opportunity to have that on their CV, and give them the opportunity. So they haven't had to go out and look for it. It's here, it's there. If they want to take part, they can. And we will give them the skills, and the knowledge and the mentoring they need to develop themselves.

Dwain Morgan: It's a really unique, great partnership that the football club has with the degree. Obviously, for us to come in and deliver some guest lectures on the course, allows us to start to teach the content that we need them to know in the real world. And we work alongside Phil and Ryan and the other lecturers, and give their academic research some context. For us, it's great, because it's almost like a three year interview. We get to work with them, lecture them, coach them. And then by the end of their degree studies, hopefully we can turn them into employees for the Argyle Community Trust.

So the Community Trust is a charitable arm of the football club. We work across different strands, but effectively doing charitable work to make sport and football accessible for those that can't access mainstream provision. So we work a lot with targeted groups. We work a lot with young people that can't access football provision. We work a lot with young people with disabilities. We work across the entire community spectrum, in making football, sport and education accessible to all.

One thing we do, is offer a really strong placement program for the students in their second year. They get a chance to come and do 100 hours work experience with us, and really find out what it's like to work with a professional football club, hopefully raising aspirations when they finish to apply for a job that we have. Also, obviously we provide quite a lot of part-time employment for them, so they can earn whilst they learn, give them a great opportunity to do some football coaching in schools and out of schools, which really gives them a taste of flavor for working in the sport development field.

I think the football development and coaching degree at Marjons is really unique, because it has an official partner to the football club. As I've mentioned, embedding the football club into the studies, into the work placements, into the practical coaching, and into the free coach ed that you get as an offer, really places the football club in the heart of the learning experience. It gives us a great opportunity to see the undergrads, and track their journey as they progress to graduates. And that gives us a great chance of offering real sustainable employment to anyone that graduates here at Marjon.

Sam Barton: I was very fortunate to get my work experience through Argyle Community Trust while I was on the degree program. With that, it helped me gain the professional relationships that I needed with the Trust, which really helped me after I finished my degree in applying for the full-time position that I am in now. The Devon FA are really supportive throughout, and they also, with the Argyle Community Trust, are always there to help you, offer you a great opportunity to get involved in other segments of football and coaching around the county.

I feel like this course has really helped me develop the skills and knowledge that I really needed to gain a qualification. But not only that, the professional relationship between the Trust that I gained, really helped me get that support and guidance to really go down the avenue of going onto a sporting environment and the sporting industry.