Somerset-based football coaching company celebrates second year of growth

This month Priority Football celebrated its second birthday. The North Somerset-based coaching company was founded by Bristol Rovers Academy coach Rob Prior in 2016, and offers an alternative way of coaching football to local children.

Traditional, ‘boring drills’ where children wait in line for a turn to dribble through cones were abandoned and replaced by fun and innovative games where each child had their own ball for the majority of sessions. This meant each player would have hundreds – if not thousands – of touches of a football during every hour they spent at Priority Football.

The approach proved immediately successful and two years later Priority Football is being delivered to around 300 children every week during evening sessions and in schools. The demand for a service offering the same ethos across multiple sports was overwhelming and earlier this year ‘Priority Sports’ was launched working primarily in the education sector.

Sports coaching in the education sector has become a hugely competitive market following the investment of over £450m in Primary School Physical Education as part of the London 2012 Olympic Legacy and schools now look to professional coaching companies to deliver a range of services in multiple sports.

“Education is quickly becoming our primary focus,” said Rob. “It’s such a fantastic opportunity to deliver sport to a high number of children at low cost and particularly to children who may not have taken part before. Our aim is to deliver exciting sessions which immediately engage children in a way they haven’t experienced before and sparks a love of sport for the rest of their childhood – there aren’t many more rewarding feelings than that.”

With October Half-Term fast approaching the aim is to build on the popularity of holiday camps which attracted over 250 children from across North Somerset during August.

Rob continued: “The Holiday Camps are probably what we are most proud of so far. To see so many children all in one place enjoying football is a great feeling and we believe we can transition that across multiple sports. This Half-term we’ll be offering totally unique musical theatre camps based around songs from The Greatest Showman and the workshops are set to sell out.”