Micky Hazard - Head of Football Development

After the national football team’s ‘flop’ at the South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup the public eye once again turned on the FA and how junior football is run in this country. The number of English players progressing from local junior football to academy setups and eventually professional football is frighteningly low. This is partly the fault of the FA and the professional clubs but also the junior clubs themselves such as ourselves.

The club has always maintained that any player that has clear potential to progress within the game will be given every support from the club. However now we are excited to announce that the club has decided to appoint Micky Hazard as Head of Football Development at STJFC.

Micky has played at the top level of football winning both the FA Cup and UEFA Cup. He also played for the national side. Now he wants to help us improve our coaching.

The club offers football for all abilities and all ages and this will never change. We appreciate that some members play for pure enjoyment and others play with a keen interest to develop as far as they can to maximise their chances of progressing
within the game.

By appointing Micky we hope that we can continue to improve the coaching we provide to all our teams, helping all of our players develop to their full potential.

Micky has strong opinions on junior football and how children should be educated to play
football. He firmly believes, and the club endorses this, that children should be taught correctly from the very earliest age to play good football - essentially the Barcelona way. He values this over winning and losing and he will be encouraging the club and its members to adopt this view recognising that a correct football education will benefit all
players in the long term.

He will be encouraging all our teams to continue to play football, no matter what the result is, avoiding the temptation to start playing long ball just to win games. We comprehend that both players and parents alike may find this hard to understand as everyone naturally wants their child to win.

However please do not misinterpret this move. We all like to win just as much as anyone
does but he will be encouraging our teams to win while not giving up playing football the right way.

This is a long term plan that we hope will over time improve the development of club players while maintaining the enjoyment they get out of playing football - at the end of the day enjoyment is the main thing as a junior football player.

If we can improve development for the all club members it will help our players progress to the level that best suits them.

Hopefully all club members will endorse these plans as after all it is not often that you get ex-professionals, particularly of this calibre, involved in a local junior football club. But you may be asking how exactly we are going to go about our aims set out above?

Firstly during the summer Micky will be holding a number of ‘coach the coaches’ sessions to share his views and philosophy. The coaches and managers will be encouraged to adopt these. He will also provide them with coaching tips and techniques which they can use in their sessions.

The club also plans to hold a number of sessions with parents where Micky will explain to the parents what the club is trying to do and why they are doing it and most importantly how the parents can help and support.

Finally Micky will be holding a minimum of two sessions with every team in the club.

We really hope that this will benefit all of our players and that everyone will enjoy the
experience of being coached by an ex-professional who has many connections within the game.

We also hope that this will help some of our players make the step into our senior teams and hence strengthen the links between the juniors and seniors. The reality is that in this area a large number of children go off to university or college so the numbers available to the seniors are low. However it would be great to see some of our players joining the senior teams when they return.