Little and Large

Phil and Russ are joined this week by Michael Coles, ex Bursar of two independent schools, and former Head of Operations for a schools group with 23 schools in it. It’s not all doom and gloom with sport being identified as the ray of light and the vehicle on which positivity can breed within the sector in these potentially dark financial times.

Lorcan O’Brien (Grammar School at Leeds) joins us for this week’s episode discussing whether the role of Director of Sport should be recognised on the Senior Management Team of a school, and of course, the recent publication of the ‘Top 200 Sports Schools’….. is it a thing? Is it sending the correct message about school sport? Do some schools need the marketing to get bums on seats?

This week's guest is Non Perfect Dad, Richard Shorter, an expert in sporting parent education. A man who works with cat. 1 football academies; independent school PE departments; and senior leaders in school environments to upskill staff to feel more confident when dealing with parents, and also to make parents feel like citizens within that sporting community. We also hear about our best and worst fixtures, as well as Phil surviving a weekend in Basel!

This week we give our key advice for when starting out as a DoS. We also discuss the best match teas out there, drunk cricket umpires, and setting off school alarms at 4.50am!

Sat in a VW Polo somewhere in Surrey, Russ and Phil get chatting about everything from how hard the pitches are this time of year, how tough it is for Directors of Sport when dealing with the cold, and how ridiculous Russ’ shoe choice was for a rugby refereeing CPD session.