The SFP Trust was delighted to award funding of £500 from their new Club Development Grant scheme to Falkirk Foundation from the Central Region. The initiative was developed to assist grassroots clubs in three specific areas – to increase participation by adding a new team to a club’s existing membership; to improve, enhance and sustain existing team activity through the purchase of new training equipment and/or funding First Aid training for coaches or thirdly to support Coach Education.
The Falkirk Foundation utilised their grant to allow two of their coaches – Ally Smith (pictured below) and Alan Gordon to undertake their C-Licence and Children’s Award respectively. The feedback from both coaches was very positive about their experience on the courses, which they both found challenging yet still felt it was a great step for them on their coaching pathway. Ally Smith, one of the lead coaches for the Falkirk F.C. women’s team was keen to enhance his knowledge base to allow him to deliver more challenging and developmental sessions to the 20 women within this squad.
Alan co-ordinates the under-7s up to the under-15 girls structure within the club and he will now be better placed to act as a mentor to the coaches and oversee the development of those that are working with around 64 girls within this section of the club. Dave MacKay, Football Development Officer at Falkirk Foundation said “these funds from The SFP Trust in partnership with The Kilpatrick Fraser Charitable Trust and Clydesdale Bank will allow us the opportunity to show that we support our coaches to become better and strive to have them as qualified as they can be in order to continue to develop our players. The funding has proved invaluable to us as a grassroots community club and has offered us the opportunity to continue to develop our coaches through these coach education courses.”
