PROFILE ON.....PAUL BROWN

Playing Career

Paul started as a goalkeeper in junior football at age of 11 at the very successful Queensbury Celtic FC. 1 year later he was selected to play for the Bradford District FA team and played for 4 years during which time he was selected to be the 1st choice goalkeeper for the West Yorkshire representative team.
At the age of 14, Paul signed schoolboy forms for Bradford City and was a regular in their U19s youth team from the age of 15. He signed for Bradford City on a full time basis at the age of 16, under then manager Lennie Lawrence who was shortly after succeeded by Chris Kamara. During this time Paul played with the likes of Jonathan Gould (former Celtic/Scotland, Steve Harper (Newcastle Utd) and Mark Schwarzer (Middlesboro/Fulham/Australia) and was coached for 2 years by Pete Williams (Goalkeeping coach at several Premier League/Serie A clubs)and Martin Hunter (FA National Coach).
After leaving Bradford City, Paul had a spell at Bradford Park Avenue before joining Brighouse Town where he stayed for 10+ years.

Coaching.

Paul began coaching full time in 1998 for 2 years following his departure from Bradford City,in schools and junior clubs as well as being responsible for running highly successful after school evening and school holiday courses in both West and North Yorkshire, with weekly sessons taking him as far as Settle, Ingleton and Hawes.
Having grown frustrated at seeing junior (and senior !!) goalkeepers turning up to training sessions at their clubs and just having balls blasted at them for an hour, Paul decided to start Paul Brown Goalkeeping and give goalkeepers of all ages the opportunity to fulfil their potential and learn the technical,mental and tactical skills required to be a top goalkeeper.

Paul is currently goalkeeper coach at at several clubs including Brighouse Town and runs his successful Goalkeeper Development Centre on Monday nights. As well as Mondays also runs a weekly Saturday morning goalkeeper coaching school for young goalkeepers at Hipperholme and Lightcliffe High School. He also carries out GK coaching at a wide range of clubs including Northowram Juniors, Brighouse Town FC, Huddersfield New College, Rastrick Juniors, Shelf Juniors, Skipton Town Jnrs, Bradford District U17's. He currently coaches approx 40 GK's per week of all ages in various sessions.

Recent Success
Highlights from the 2011/12 season included the West Riding County FA selecting both of their 1st choice goalkeepers for their U16 and U18s Rep teams from Paul's coaching schools. 18yr old Goalkeeper Ciaran Gibson was also selected as one of the final 4 goalkeepers chosen for the English Schools FA national squad and one of our goalkeepers, Tom Stewart accepted the offer of a scholarship at Guiseley FC for the 2012/13 season and has now gone on to sign a full contract at the age of 16. Another one of our U16 Development Centre goalkeepers, Tom Noden, has taken up the offer of a place in the Farsley FC Academy for next season.

Paul is an FA Licensed Coach and member of and The Association of Football Coaches.

"For me, it is immensely frustrating knowing, that there could be hundreds of young goalkeepers out there, who for various reasons, are not being given the knowledge and guidance the require to become the best goalkeeper they can be. For me, goalkeepers who are labelled as 'good shot stoppers' should be somewhat insulted. After all, every goalkeeper, as an absolute minimum, should be a good shot stopper........that is their job !! Modern day goalkeepers need to have all round technical ability, with quality distribution being a massive part of a goalkeepers game.

It is worrying that there are hundreds of goalkeepers who are treated as nothing more than cannon fodder for the outfielders to blitz balls at in training and the most worrying thing is that their no doubt 'qualified' coach probably believes that the goalkeeper is receiving some sort of quality training !!

There is no doubt about it......for any goalkeeper to improve they require specific goalkeeper coaching and in my opinion from someone who has played in that position to a good standard and actually understands the challenges of the position through experience and not just reading it in a book. Practice does NOT make perfect.......Perfect practice makes perfect and poor coaching will only lead to bad habits and poor technique. Get the techniques right in training and consistency in games will follow naturally.

There are no shortcuts for those who want to be a successful goalkeeper. Consistency, commitment and dedication are key, and if you want to succeed you must learn to use the postives to your advantage have the self belief to recover mentally from your mistakes and viewing knock-backs as a chance for a comeback. This can only be done by preparing yourself for matches, in training. As the saying goes....Fail to prepare.....prepare to fail".