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 80 youngsters, and around 10 coaches. We focus on the delivery of age appropriate skills based coaching to children between the ages of 6 and 12. Although not our main priority, we also facilitate competitive games for our players outside of normal league structures.
Our main source of recruiting players has, to date, been through scouting from the local annual Gourock YAC Sevens Tournament which runs from April to September, the Saturday morning football sessions offered by Inverclyde Leisure and through our own open trials.
Our organisation is split into two main coaching groups; our youngest group is called the Kickers who train weekly at Gourock High School, who then progress to coaching sessions 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.
In the relatively short period since we formed, we are proud to have been able to maximise our players’ talents to a level where they have moved on to playing with 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.