Helping youngsters achieve their goals

It was launched in late September 2015 by Andrew Robin and Bradley Halsman, who has previously played football for Motherwell and Partick Thistle before deciding to forget his professional career in football and focus on his ever growing coaching customer base.

The whole idea is to help children aged five and over of all abilities work on their specific football ability.

For so long team training or group coaching has been the only way for a child to develop their skills, and this is where 121 Sports Coaching comes in.

Andrew explained: “We believed that just like a maths tutor or a golf lesson, more individual attention and specific coaching would deliver accelerated progress and results.

“Not only that, we looked at this opportunity as a way to help part-time or even full-time football players across Scotland earn a secondary income.

“As we all know it can be hard to survive off even a full time football salary here in Scotland and so having a football related part-time job seemed like a great answer to anyone looking to supplement their weekly income.”

Fast forward almost three years and more than 200 youngsters receive 121 Football Coaching across four venues – Glasgow West (Clydebank), Aberdeen, Sunderland and, of course, where it all began in South Glasgow (Goals Shawlands).

“Both myself and Bradley are from the Southside (Thornliebank and Giffnock) and so this is where we have seen the biggest growth since launching,” Andrew continued.

“We do our best to arrange times and days that suit parents’ busy schedules through the week and at the weekend.

“We have between 25-30 current or ex-professional football players delivering the 121 Football Coaching sessions to kids of all ages and abilities every week.

“We have local football heroes such as Callum Gallagher (previously of Rangers FC and now Dumbarton FC) delivering the coaching on a weekly basis. Callum began his football as a youngster with Giffnock Soccer Centre.”

He continued: “We also run fantastic Football Training Camps during the summer holidays.

“These have become extremely popular, again mainly at our base location in South Glasgow we now have 60+ kids attending each of the Football Camps.

“We were recently at the Giffnock Soccer Festival for the first time and as we were watching some of the matches, we were amazed at how many of the kids at all of the different teams and age groups we had attending our coaching each week.

“It was almost impossible to choose a side as we had players in both teams in almost every match.

“We will also be attending the Glasgow Cup later in the summer to see some more of our boys and girls in action.

“We have parents travel from all over the country to receive the coaching.

“Some examples include a strong customer base from Galston near Kilmarnock, around two dozen travel up on a weekly basis for their individual coaching sessions, one travels from way past Loch Lomond, a couple from Falkirk, as well as a customer that comes over once a month from the Isle of Arran.”

For further information, visit www.121sportscoaching.co.uk/football/.