ABSTRACT
Like many national governing bodies (NGBs) of sport, The Football Association (The FA) is committed to coach development. At the heart of coach development is a desire to create reflective practitioners who embrace life-long learning to promote meaningful experiences for those they coach (Lyle & Cushion, 2010). Through its coach education programme, The FA signposts a commitment to its broader goal of ‘football for everyone’ (The FA, 2011) and a responsibility to work towards inclusion and anti-discrimination (The FA, 2015). For example, a range of opportunities are offered to support coaches to better understand how to work with disabled footballers. In part, the impetus for targeting disabled footballers comes from a broader recognition that this group has a ‘right’ to sport (United Nations, 2006). Indeed, The FA and other NGBs have engaged in activities to raise levels of participation and performance in sport among disabled people. These activities include supporting coach development, and this chapter considers The FA's Coaching Disabled Footballers (CDF) course. To offer a wider context to this course, the chapter begins with a brief literature review that considers disabled sport and the concept of inclusion. After this, selected findings are presented from a larger CDF research project. Specifically, consideration is given to CDF course participants’ motives, aspirations and satisfaction with the course. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of this research for The FA, NGBs and researchers.
