Scholarship at Stirling offers second chance to young footballers

IT’S been four years in the making. Four years since Stirling University decided to expand their sports scholarships programme to include football, four years since they entered the East of Scotland league and four years since they set in motion a gameplan that would see success measured in more ways than medals.

Yesterday, the football team from Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence rounded off a glory-ridden season by defeating Spartans 2-1 in the King Cup final to add that trophy to the SFA South Challenge Cup, the Alex Jack Cup and, most pertinently, the Premier Division title. They have done it in a style that has won them many admirers. But in the past four years even bigger goals have been realised.

More than 60 players have been awarded scholarships and in the four years the programme has been up and running they have helped players combine the football dream with academia.

The majority had been discarded by senior clubs, some had even been capped at youth level, all had been forced to find their feet again after the rug had been pulled from beneath them.

“We made the decision to include football in our scholarship programme for, broadly, three reasons,” explains sports performance manager Raleigh Gowrie. “One was the fact we had been investing in sport scholarships for over 30 years. We had golf, tennis, swimming and triathlon in the programme at that time and we wanted to dip our toe into a team sport.

“The second thing was because Falkirk Football Club had set up base here, on campus, and we had developed a very good working relationship with them. We were helping service some of their high-performance programmes and they were accessing our facilities so it would have been stupid not to tap into their knowledge about how we could take football forward.

“The third thing was about the students. A large proportion come from C1 C2 social class backgrounds where football is central to the lives of a lot of young people and we wanted to offer something that would enhance their student experience and attract more of that social demographic into university education.”

The feeling was that football could be used as a tool to bring some people into higher education who may never have had that opportunity before. Many would be the first members of their families to actually come to university. Most of all it was a second chance to prove their football worth, rebuild their shattered dreams and do so while ensuring that this time they would have a safety net to fall back on if the target remained out of their reach.

Football club finances mean that few late developers are nurtured by professional clubs, who make clinical judgments and make them early. The success of Stirling’s programme proves that there are some who need the extra time to learn the discipline, the skills or even benefit from strength and conditioning. With several players moving on to play professionally abroad in the southern hemisphere, as well as in the likes of Sweden and Iceland, the hard work has been worth it. For others there are this season’s achievements and the lure of playing in the Scottish Cup next season as a consequence. For some, the rewards have come off the pitch. Many have used their qualifications to go into coaching, sports business, sports development and sports science ensuring they can give something back to the game.

And meanwhile, more and more senior clubs have come sniffing. But, when compared to the professionalism and facilities of the Stirling programme, the majority of those clubs have come up short and the students have elected to finish their studies somewhere they can expand their mind as well as their football horizons.

“I always found it irksome that talented players from this country would go to the USA to get football scholarships. I would love to see the day when we can keep our best talent in this country and maybe even lure players from the USA and the continent across here,” says Gowrie.

“Of course winning is nice, every player enjoys that [but]for us there were always goals inside and around football but they were not necessarily focused purely on on-field success. We take a great deal of quiet satisfaction in seeing what our guys have achieved. We are proud of them and they should be proud of themselves.

“Look at the East of Scotland Premier Division,” adds Gowrie. “Next season there will be three university teams in there and maybe that tells us something. Maybe there are more ways to develop footballers in this country than simply having them put all their eggs in one basket at a very young age, only to see so many fall by the wayside.”

There will be no argument from the guys who showered each other in champagne for the umpteenth time this season as they celebrated yesterday.