My name is Joseph Ledbury, everyone calls me Joey, and I am a 26-year-old male who was born and raised in Bristol in the South West.
Since I can remember, I have loved football, and making a career in football was always my aspiration and goal to achieve in life. Unfortunately, I was not given the gift to play football at the elite level so looked for other routes to push towards within the industry.
At the age of 21, after playing a couple of years of non-league football, a frustrating knee injury put me on the side-line for the rest of the season, and with this news, I knew I needed to occupy myself until I could recover. I was very lucky to get the opportunity to assist my local grassroots side, Oldland Abbatonians with their U16 team for the majority of the 2018/19 season.
After the season concluded, I knew I had found a new passion and made the decision to retire from competitive football to pursue my new aspirations in the coaching world, I never knew it would take me where it eventually would. The summer of 2019, I began my journey as I began my FA Level 1 certificate in coaching and continued with my level 1 Goalkeeping and level 1 Futsal certificate to continue to expand my knowledge.
I continued to learn and develop upon the completion of my level 1 badges and could only dream of one day applying for my level 2 and eventually the UEFA B licence.
Unfortunately, my career was put on standby for over a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic that stopped all football activity. During this time, I occupied my time by working as a forklift operator in a food distribution warehouse, this didn’t stop me wanting to continue to develop as I spent countless hours researching, watching sessions, match observations, becoming part of a group of local coaches who held weekly zoom calls to share and educate with each other.
In May 2021, I took my next step as I was given the opportunity to begin working at South Gloucestershire Regional Talent Centre in Bristol as a casual goalkeeper coach and become the U12s manager in the Junior Premier League. I took on this role whilst working to complete my FA level 2 course, now known as the UEFA C course.
By September 2021, I was offered the role as head of goalkeeping which meant overlooking over 60 goalkeepers from the age of 7 up to 16. While I took on this fantastic new opportunity, I continued to manage the U12s team in the JPL.
Upon completing my FA level 2 in September 2021, I began to look towards the next steps as I wanted to continue my CPD and little did I know what was in stall for me in the year 2022.
The year started with a successful application for the FA Regional Youth Network as a regional youth leader for the South West, a role which I am very proud of and still hold to this day. Following this, I was offered a career defining role as I began working for Southampton FC academy in Bath as a lead goalkeeper coach in their Bristol Development Centre. This is a role that I am incredibly proud of, which also gave me the foundation to progress my career as I enrolled into the clubs education programme where, as of June 2023, I completed the UEFA B licence.
In May 2022, I was offered a once in a lifetime opportunity, as I was personally invited to be part of an event at the Emirates Stadium in North London, the home of Arsenal FC. There I helped run a 90-minute session for group of local academy and JPL players who trained and played intensely while wearing the advanced Statsports technology. Simply an unforgettable day in my life and a career moment which will be remembered for as long as I live.
My journey still continues as in the last year I have been lucky enough to travel internationally to visit Real Madrid training group with the Junior Premier League Rep Team where we stayed for four days. I have recently come back from a football tournament in Rotterdam. I have travelled from Newcastle all the way down to south Cornwall on the journey as a football coach and continue with my CPD, recently completing courses such as the FA Goalkeeper Level 2 and National Futsal course at St Georges Park.
It certainly has been an incredible journey so far, and the way I look at it… its only just begun. How I have managed to experience so much and achieve what I have while working in a full-time job and full time at University is beyond me, but I absolutely love my lifestyle and would never change my journey in any way. If you are thinking of exploring other opportunities in football outside of playing, I would really encourage you to consider starting coaching. If you work hard, and have a desire to keep learning and growing your network, you can go really far.