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I’m sure I have written about this before, but I have been re-inspired by coaches once again this week. 

This week I finished my FA level 1 football coaching award, I would never have done this but they told me at the club to do it and that they would shut down my team if I didn’t. 

I’ve been avoiding this for years. 

I’ve moaned and b*****d about having to do something like 35 hours of training through March, simply because I felt like I did not have the time and then I was introduced to Tom the FA affiliate coach who taught us on the level 1 course. 

I pretty much knew nothing about football when I came to coach a group of 7 year old boys to play football but I felt I knew stuff about coaching. 

I have been coached to death throughout my life from both wonderful teachers to brilliant basketball coaches in school at county level and international level, through lectures in University and Clinicians that taught me the way as a dentist, I have had business coaches, financial coaches and unofficial life coaches. 

All of them have given me something or shown me a different way and have given me an insight in to things that I was doing for the sake of doing but could been doing better. 

And now I add Tom our FA Coach to that list. 

From the very first day of that course he was inspirational, both in his enthusiasm for his subject and his depth of knowledge. 

His ability to alter the session based on the needs of the group in front of him, yet still remain within the broad framework that had been given to him by his ruling body, that is a true skill. 

Anyone can teach a syllabus and re-light information to a group of people that are sat in front of them but only a few people can engage and inspire and encourage a group to go out after the session and make a difference to a wider audience. 

Last Saturday in March marks the end of the FA level 1 teaching course, as everyone on the course headed out to pass the knowledge down and the inspiration alone to pre-teenage boys and girls and probably change their lives forever, if only in a small way. 

That is some legacy that Tom has as he teaches on the FA level 1 courses around the region. 

What a gift he leaves behind and what a ripple effect he manufactures as he influences positively of lives of hundreds and hundreds of children that he never even meets. 

I would settle for that, that is a life well lived.

Blog Post Number- 1959