December’s guest on our Coaches’ Coffee Club podcast is Robin Nicholls, Academy Manager at Sunderland AFC.
Nicholls was appointed as the Black Cats’ Academy Manager in December 2022 after seven years at Southampton in various roles including Head of Academy Operations and Assistant Academy Manager.
Foundation of Light Football in the Community coordinator, Jack Gray, and Managing Director, Jamie Wright, sat down with Nicholls to discuss his journey in coaching and work at SAFC.
Amongst the discussion, topics included an overview of how the academy works and serves the SAFC first-team, progressing players such as Chris Rigg and Tommy Watson to senior football, and achieving Category One academy status.
On developing academy players as people as well as footballers, Nicholls said: “We believe there’s some really good opportunities and transferrable skills that we give to the boys.
"We deliver our decisions around 16s in December. So the deadline is by the end of December, we try and do it towards the start just to give the players a chance.
“We have recently been through sitting down with the players and discussing what the future looks like for them. We have a really strong life skills programme delivered by our player care lead.
“We have been using your facilities regularly here for a careers’ fair day which was excellent, we had four big deliveries to the 18s and 21s about what the Foundation does and what careers could look like for them."
To hear more of the academy manager's insights, watch the latest episode of Coaches' Coffee Club:
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