Gregor Rioch Interview - Part 1

Your own personal playing career took an unexpected turn when you were released from Shewsbury after the collapse of ITV Digital, but you successfully adapted to a working environment that must have been alien to you with your footballing past. How hard was this to deal with knowing that football was all you had done up to that point?

I think it's very difficult and it's pretty much what my role is now, to try and give the younger lads an insight that sometimes football doesn't go the way that you always want it to, as you say I had to adapt very quickly. I got let go from full time football at Shrewsbury and I took a part time playing career at Northwich which was quite local to my home. I was part time coaching at Manchester City working with some excellent players there, and I knew that was what I wanted to do once I'd finished playing football but I wasn't expecting things to go down that route so quickly. I had to do something during the day to make up the money to pay the bills so I went and joined a friend of mine who had his own mobile phone company and ended up selling mobile phones and contracts for a living, which was a complete realisation into the big wide world out there. I did that for a year then got a lucky break, and went back to Shrewsbury Town as a full time player again. So I had one more year at it, got released again, and then ended up going into the full time coaching abroad so I had a few experiences, it was quite a difficult 2 - 3 years for me.

I suppose the academy tries to teach the young lads that you have here something quite similar, because there's not a huge percentage that will make it to a full time career as a player, do you try and instil that experience into them?

We were lucky last year that we got 4 out of the 7 apprentices whose time was up, if you like, as academy players. 4 of them signed professional contracts and for the other 3 they'll try and gain another football club while still at Coventry City's academy. There's always room in other centres of excellences, or clubs at lower divisions. Sometimes that doesn't work out (and) the education is vital, they come in and do one and a half days a week of a college course, we have a full time education officer here who oversees that, and they do a college course which is the equivalent of 2 A levels. So if it does fall foul for them at the end of two years, they might still get the opportunity of a university place to go and further study. We've got a 100% record in the last few years of qualifications and the education is something we are very proud of. We are one of a handful of clubs who have a 100% record and we make sure they get through, because as you say - from my experiences there is a big wide world out there and you sometimes get cocooned in the football environment.

To be continued...