Hi, Cookie, how are you doing? I'm

all right,

Quick question this week is, if you hadn't have ended up as a footballer, what would you have wanted to do?

Good question.

I've got a clue.

Pro gamer.

[upbeat rock music] What was those moments t- that grew you as a coach that you saw looking back, reflecting, and even in the moment, if you have moments that were like these aha moments in those moments?

Yeah, I think when...

So a- after Sunderland, sorry, after Oxford, I moved to Sunderland, and to, to, to bring that in, I was only at Sunderland for that time, my, my first son was born, and so I was like a stay-at-home dad at the time.

My ex-wife would look after... would go to work, and then I was staying at home with, with my son, and that allowed me, because I was in between work full time, Sunderland, Sunderland was a part-time role, and so I could work at Sunderland.

I could really develop things, and you've mentioned it, being a parent, that was where it was a bit of a change for me of going, "Oh my God." That is a moment, a eureka moment of being a parent has allowed me to really understand how children learn, the determination that they have.

And when I was at Sunderland, it was something that I could really put together because I was working with the under 14s, under 15s, uh, under 13s at the time, and it got me back on the grass.

I could start to coach.

The coach is playing with what they want to play with, the formations and the tactics, and not playing with their players.

So what age did you sit down and finally get your first badge or finished? And where are you at in that process with your badges? Because that would give us a good idea of a little bit of your coaching background with your badges.

Yeah, so a little brief history was I started at 16 and the Level 1 was very much a...

I think you did four weekends, you did a little bit of coaching with the tutor, and then you just said, you can go and coach.

And it was just the basics.

You learnt little games, how to mark a pitch out, a couple of goals, and the basics of what it means to coach and to lead a coaching session.

That was at 16.

Then at...

built oxford and and whatnot from scratch so what was that like it's a whole new learning process

So at that moment with that injury, did you, did you know something went straight away? Saw something was seriously wrong?

Yeah, yeah.

I think it was a minute into the game, you know.

The ball's gone down the line, hasn't it? So I'm running.

And there's not, I'd say there's a defender about arm's length away from us.

So as I've ran, the ball's coming to me.

I've took a step, but I've took another step with the same foot because the ball's coming.

Like you say, that sense, you know, when you sense it,

This potentially could be we have a net loss

Yeah, my interpretation of this is that when we start thinking about head count, there may be a hesitation out there to backfill within the organization.

Turnover will occur in internal audit.

That's a, a prolific thing.

I, I think, you know, a 10% turnover rate is not unheard of on a regular basis.

The way we address some of these budget constraints is not to backfill those positions a lot of times.

So I think organizations may say, "You know, we got a freeze on hiring going forward.

So just kind of tell us, you know, how these things are working together and some best practices and ideas for that.

Is that just the nature of going through the leagues and trying to get better and being ambitious with that? Or did some of those players deserve to step up with the club as well?

This is the one where you can make a headline with a few things that are said and all those kind of bits.

But unfortunately, I do think it's a little bit of the nature.

There's a certain level.

You've got to keep a certain level of the football club, the people that know the club, whether that's staff, players, whatever it is.

But you look at every club that has gone through the leagues.

I think, obviously, Newcastle United are the best example who went from Tier 4 and are now in Tier 2. there is no players involved in that football team that was there at Tier 4 with them.

I mean, how closely were all of those things aligned during your

So talk to us some about how you help people be better at sharing their faith.

Yeah, that's great.

So we... we've noticed, and some of the evangelists who are our listeners right now will know that sometimes there's a gap between evangelists and the local church.

And some of this is a natural thing.

We have people who, over the years, I've even had people been like, oh, well, Billy Graham did evangelism, and then we're going to do spiritual formation or discipleship within the local church context.

And so we've kind of created this dual thing where you know, churches are doing discipleship and evangelists are out there doing things.

And there's not as much connection sometimes to the local church.

Can you share some of your testimony? How did you come to know Christ? And then how did you get excited about evangelism?

So you provide information, but then he can have the whole audience of the country, if you like, listening to stats and

information.

Totally.

And our primary target is government in that way, and they can certainly shift a dial.

And so there's been some amazing things done over the years.

The Modern Slavery Bill came through the CSJ.

That all came from small charities saying, why aren't you doing anything on modern slavery? It was well before my time.

Where do we get back some influence on role models that puts back that dignity, that pride into actually being a boy, being a girl and champing the people that really should be?