Real sport and physical activity career stories: Dan Richardson

When I was young, I was quite quiet – I watched sports on TV and played computer games. I didn’t really socialise within my local community because growing up, it was quite a challenging environment.

I did boxing and played football and rugby, though. As I got older, I grew in confidence and ended up playing sports all the time, playing football on the grass behind my house even though there was a “no ball games” sign.

I played football at quite a high level – I passed all of my qualifications and wanted to study sports at college. I even had opportunities to go professional at one point. I never managed that, though, and felt like a failure because of it.

I ended up on a bad path and left my family home at 17. After a while I turned things around, though. I changed my whole life and worked in food, retail and security. They were stable jobs, and in my free time I started up a new football team with a friend who was a coach. Then all of a sudden, an opportunity came up.

I was told about an opportunity to do a sports coaching apprenticeship through Coach Core with LS14 Trust, a local charity. To start with, I wasn’t sure. Don’t apprentices just make cups of tea? But I took the chance, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

The apprenticeship has given me so much freedom to grow in my own way. I used my skills and my background to my advantage, and it helped me to feel confident in my role.

My original apprenticeship was the Level 2 Community Activator Coach, but I went on to complete a Level 3 too, which I got a distinction for. I’ve developed great leadership skills through my training and been able to develop, source funding for and run programmes at the charity.

I like to keep up my CPD as well. I’m proud of how far I’ve come, and it was an honour to be nominated for Graduate of the Year for the Coach Core Awards 2025 in recognition of my achievements.

I am now the Community Sports and Health Officer for LS14 Trust. I have a lot of different responsibilities in my role and every day is different. It’s a lot of paperwork, with submitting bids, getting funding, reporting and analysing sessions.

Sometimes I go into schools where I mentor and coach young people who are struggling and not engaging with school. I support them and help them to make better choices and get involved with positive activities.

In the evenings, I run lots of sports sessions. It’s mainly football, and I work with young people from age 7 to 18. I also run an adult session once a week. They mostly take place in the local park where people hang out anyway, so they will see me running activities, recognise my face and want to join in.

A lot of my work is building relationships with people in the local community and being a visible role model for young people. I offer them consistent support and I love what I do.

I now run a football session for young people aged 16 and above from the local area and asylum seekers staying in a nearby hotel. I started it because I wanted to challenge the current situation where locals had negative ideas about the asylum seekers. As a result of the stereotyping and behaviour towards them, the asylum seekers didn’t feel safe using the local green spaces to get active.

By bringing these groups of people together, I’ve made them feel comfortable enough to ask questions, get things wrong and learn from each other. I am lucky that I went to a very diverse school and knew people from lots of different backgrounds, so it’s great to be able to use my experience and further develop my skills in bringing together communities.

The asylum seekers speak a lot of different languages, so there is a language barrier. By facilitating communication through football, I am helping to break down barriers in the local community.

I’m now looking at stepping away from LS14 Trust to set up my own entirely sports-led charity organisation.

Instead of just providing football on the park, we are looking at offering a full sports provision. That means that while we’re running our football sessions, there will be a container of other sports equipment that will be available, like ping pong tables, badminton and tennis nets, basketballs and throwing discs. I see lots of children in the park who don’t join in because they’re not interested in playing football, but they would get active if they could do something else.

I’m also looking at setting up a cricket team for the asylum seekers in the local area. I want to give them ownership of the team, so I’m looking at how to upskill them, which will support them in getting work permits and finding job security.