Kevin Keegan has managed to find work after his playing career as a manager, as many famous ex pros do. But what if you played your football at a low level and you’re by no means a household name? Dave Hockaday is one such player who has had to face this dilemma.

Hockaday, 38, had a long career playing with both Swindon Town and Shrewsbury, but he found himself unemployed at the tender age of 35. He’d obtained some coaching qualifications but finding a manager’s job straight away with out any proven track record is extremely difficult.

Having said all of this, Dave Hockaday has managed to defy all of the odds and lead a revolution in British football youth policy, which has changed the nature of the game.

“I had a good career in football, and even though I never hit the big time the game had served me well. After my retirement I desperately wanted to stay in football because it had been a large part of my life for so long. Management wasn’t really an option for someone of my experience, but I knew I had something to offer to the game, and I really just happened upon the idea of a football academy.”

Hockaday set up the Cirencester Football Academy in conjunction with the local Sixth Form College. The idea was to pick up the youngsters who had been dropped from the centres of excellence, and provide them with continued coaching as well as the opportunity to gain some qualifications at the same time.

“It is such a simple idea which costs us nothing. We get the use of the college facilities and they get some good publicity. The lads I get here have very few qualifications because they have concentrated solely on football all of their lives. They have always treated education as a secondary element to football. Now even if they don’t make it as a professional footballer they will be safe in the knowledge that they have something else to fall back on.”

The Academy team has already built up a nation-wide reputation by winning the National College Championship. Cirencester beat Sheffield 5-0 in the final, and the fact that the college only has 800 students compared to Sheffield’s 40,000, shows how far the Academy has come in such a short space of time.

Hockaday’s work has not gone unnoticed and now there are many other colleges who are about to start similar schemes. The big professional clubs are also following his lead with Liverpool the first to set up its new £13 million academy. Built on a 45-acre site on the outskirts of Liverpool, it boasts 12 pitches, classrooms, residences, gyms, and an indoor centre. This is a far reach from the Cirencester Academy but is based on the same principles set out by Hockaday.

It is very ironic that the very same people who refused to give any backing to the idea in the first place are now heralding their great new academy scheme.

“I initially went to the Football League, the P.F.A and the F.A for some advice and backing on the idea of the Academy, but they didn’t want to know. Now after 4 years of unbridled success I get the F.A’s leading coach (Don Howe) quizzing me about my scheme for three hours. Funnily enough 18 months later the F.A announced their revolutionary new idea of academies.”

Academies are the future of the British game and hopefully the players who are eventually dropped by their clubs will be able to pick up the pieces and find another career with the education they have received. But still there is a down side to this revolution because of the amount of money and expectation that is involved in these academies at a professional level.

“At the end of the day it’s good that clubs are setting up academies and learning from our experience, but the big clubs like Liverpool have very different motives to us. If you invest £13 million you expect an end product, and so I believe they are likely to neglect the educational side somewhat. At my Academy if there is a choice between an exam or a cup final, the exam wins every time. But at Liverpool I suspect they would chose the final.”

Dave Hockaday, who now also lectures at the College, has proved that there is a life after football for the lesser known players, and now he is doing his utmost to ensure these youngsters also have a future whether it be in football or not.