History

Formed in 2003 by local coaches John McClurg, Des McCole and Billy Clark – who were also founders of the Gourock YAC Development Centre. First Touch is a voluntary organisation which is self funded, and has grown from 30 players and 5 coaches to more than 65 youngsters, and around 15 coaches. We focus on the delivery of age appropriate skills based coaching to children between the ages of 6 and 12. Whilst maintaining this focus, we have now joined the Paisley & Johnstone and District leagues for under 9′s, 10′s and 11′s.( www.pjdyfl.com )
Our priority, however, is to prioritise the continued development of the player rather than being results driven. Our main source of recruiting players had been through scouting from the local annual Gourock YAC Sevens, which unfortunately stopped last season. Many of the kids have contacted First Touch via the website and have been invited in for trials this has been a great benefit for all age groups, we now have a boy and girl who travel from Rothesay for every session. 

Our coaching takes place twice a week at the Battery Park, Greenock. Our pool of coaching talent combines youth and experience together with current and former players, including many with experience playing at amateur, junior and senior levels. Since our formation, we are proud to have been able to maximise our players’ talents to a level where they have moved on to playing with local boys clubs and senior pro-youth clubs, including Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Greenock Morton. We also continue to send players for trials or additional coaching to some of these clubs.
Off the park we pride ourselves on having a highly effective and up to date governance infrastructure which covers recruitment of new coaches, child protection policies and codes of conduct for coaches, parents and players.