Perspectives of an Intern: Grace Bradshaw
Welcome to the latest issue of The Football Scientist.
This week's newsletter has been guest written by Grace Bradshaw.
Grace is a sports science intern at Hull FC who play in the Super League (highest level of Rugby League in the UK).
For the past year, she has been on a sandwich placement year within her BSc Sport and Exercise Sciences course at Loughborough University.
Grace shares her experiences as an intern below, which is useful both for aspiring/current students and also placement providers within clubs.
You can follow Grace on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-bradshaw-388a001ba/
My Background
As a current Undergraduate Sport & Exercise Science Student at Loughborough University, undertaking a sandwich placement year with Hull FC working across Academy, Reserve and First Grade is a dream first role to get my foot into professional sport; especially growing up in Hull and supporting Hull FC from a young age.
Personally, I was exposed to watching numerous sports and participated in multiple sports through school, competing in all the tournaments, and representing my county in competitive gymnastics until concurring injuries re-rerouted my path towards a practitioner/ coaching role.
Realising I still possessed the passion and determination of an athlete, a professional career in sport supporting athletes was my next best prospect.
I worked myself to near burnout chasing that passion even through COVID, but the outcome of attending Loughborough made the process meaningful and educational.
My interests are leading towards studying for an MSc within High Performance in the future to encompass all of these, but that is hypothetical.
University Course and Placement
During my first two years at Loughborough, after the initial lockdowns, I volunteered with the BUCs Rugby League (RL) team currently in the Southern Premier conference.
We made the semi-final year immediately after COVID having won the Southern League and producing the best team performance finish the club had seen in a decade. The club granted us access to acquiring the Level 2 RL Coaching qualification, from which I acted as assistant coach, shadow conditioner, first aid and matchday physio for next two years.
As they never had any additional staff other than their current coach previously, the opportunity to gain hands-on experience, albeit experimental sometimes, was invaluable.
Within my final semester in first year (April-June 2021), the team had a friendly with Hull university men’s. Our coach introduced me to Hull’s coach, who also was the interim Hull FC academy coach and Head of Community Foundation.
He offered me a summer job working with the foundation and accommodated me observing academy training and attending their final games of the year. This carried on for every holiday until Summer 2022, and in those 2 years I had built both professional and personal rapports with the academy staff, foundation staff and players.
I approached the coach again in Easter Summer 2022 inquiring about placement opportunities, after considering the options presented by Loughborough’s Career Network from clubs and organisations.
They gratefully formulated a role for me based off what the first team sport scientist does in his role, and what the Academy Strength & Conditioning wanted to monitor and maintain regarding the Academy’s wellness, training load progression, specific testing, and data analysis.
Within the first two weeks of pre-season, I gratefully got an extended invite to observe and learn from the first team by the head coach himself after an introductory talk with the Academy, and ever since then have been attending both team’s training and matches. Key Learnings from the Placement
I can split the key skills and knowledge from this year between the two teams. With the first team, it is mainly observing and learning how to apply theory from the elite professional perspective; more specific and intense schedules, science backed approaches and sport-approved technology for testing and monitoring loads (GPS, Hawkins Dynamic Force Plates, VO2 treadmills, isometric knee etc).
Furthermore, the coaches technical and tactical insights, recovery mechanisms and match-day routine procedures. Conversations with staff and their respective job roles are more specific and specialised.
With the Academy, I take the learnings from first team and filtering the information down, reflecting how I can apply techniques, methods and analysis to help my contribution to academy sessions where I have more autonomy and role responsibility.
For instance, helping with core and conditioning sessions, warmups, time gates, force plates testing, understanding gym and field progressions for coaching.
Albeit frustrating for the club and players, it is fortunate that the beginning run of games of the season were mostly defeats with varying good and poor performances.
How to approach enduring through adversity, the importance of trusting relationships and how to keep motivating not only yourself but showing up for players, especially when they perceive themselves at high fault or needs much improvement were my key lessons.
Being able to apply all the latest and popular methods of training or recovery is not as effective as being able to get the player to buy-in or show genuine efforts in adherence to what you’re prescribing.
This is not only in training, but on matchday where the collective focus and all reading from the same page has been crucial in the deliverance of wins and player morale. It is personally rewarding to adapt these findings when engaging with the younger academy players, who may be more inclined to take a loss personally, and see their mindset evolve with my guidance.
Even with the most detailed plans for every session and player group managements, plans can easily go out the window or the decision to change them comes 10 minutes beforehand – being flexible, adaptable, and then thrive as your role requires is a daily challenge; but one that became a fun experience once I embraced the unknown and accepted the volatility of schedules. For myself especially with locations, as I am still a learner driver, having a home support network that accepted this has helped.
Personal Aspects
I am in the best position to be able to live at home, and so to save money on accommodation and shopping is shared with parents. Although any luxuries, extra travel, extra kit etc. is from my own savings.
However, most students will have to re-locate, most sporting clubs don’t offer paid internships, and the money given to cover accommodation is not enough to make the year (especially with inflation and the cost of living).
Maintenance loans have not reflected the economic changes to prices and bills over the pas few years, so being in debt and sacrificing meals for living I’ve heard from friends is a growing issue.
My placement is not paid, and like most students searching for experience, was aware that the placement was going to be unpaid before I accepted my current role. It is rare to find a quality internship that does pay within the UK. I don’t have to pay for the matchday travel, nor for the standard kit they initially provided.
I don’t have a part time job either, as I decided to commit to my placement with both teams (adding up to average 40 hours across a week, not including travel to games) and spend my time off with family and for my own wellbeing while I’m home.
I have adapted to the balance quite well, as I am an extremely headstrong, determined and openminded individual, and I genuinely enjoy being around the teams and the environment.
This comes with the disadvantage however, of knowing when to slow down or to channel my present focus. Overlaps in plans, a clash with scheduled occasions, even having to withdraw myself to replenish my energy. I haven’t stopped since November and things still change daily; it can build up to a potential burnout, more so since RL is a smaller sport, so the staff are less numerous but with more inter and cross disciplinary.
University Support
My university placement tutor and personal tutor are continually responsive and supportive of my progress, answering questions and keeping me updated with quarterly check-in meetings.
I receive weekly news and updates from my university, my subject school, and career network via email. I engineered this placement myself, as the university has never had professional contact with Hull FC before, but they were entirely supportive and openly communicative with my supervisors to ensure my placement progression is valued. I have had no issues with the connection between my university and club.
This placement will and is helping towards my final year in bringing some clarity into the specific sub-sections or areas of the sport-science industry; topics, practices, and approaches that are more realistic to a professional sporting club.
I am discovering every day what it is I am strong within and what isn’t my area of expertise, giving me intrinsic insights into skills and knowledge I will be more inclined to need if I follow this career path into RL.
Even halfway through this year, I have a positive anticipation to get stuck into and make the most of my final year with the module topics and assignments, conducting my own research influenced by this year that could be useful to practitioners.
Internship Perspectives
Most clubs I’ve heard from fellow students and supervisors that for an intern, they’re an extra body that can do the duties that need doing but don’t necessarily want to be done or that is not described in the initial job description (cleaning shakers, collecting cones, cleaning up after games, handing sheets out etc).
If the intern is implied to do a job and supervisors and coaches, do it with them, then it is a great learning experience as it’s encouraging a team effort and realistic expectation of the job’s many roles.
Nevertheless, I got thrown straight into leading a project with the academy including supplementary tasks, warm up sessions, testing, data collection and visuals, with daily on the spot tasks within sessions.
With the first team, it was more the traditional progression of observing and asking questions, with filling waters and helping set up and clear away drills (which I was proactive with doing).
Few months later, as relationships and trust were built, I am now given daily responsibilities with cutting drills live in the Catapult data stream, interchanging players, feeding back accurate live data from specific drills or rehab runs (meters, speeds etc), and even responsible for the first team players’ GPS and welfare in Reserves games when the lead sport scientist isn’t present.
Previously I have been charged with timing tempos, leading a conditioning session, and supervising rehab conditioning. I am more fortunate than some to be given this freedom in the variety and frequency of roles and tasks within both teams, however unpaid I am.
Most teams don’t and will take advantage of the ambitious eager intern by not paying them and limiting them to the mundane tasks. This may be, as Hull is a RL team that had no previous internship placement schemes set up, and that as a sport RL doesn’t have the money like football to invest in huge staffs with their own specialism, having a willing extra body is a genuine benefit for both the club and intern.
It may be a natural progression for staff who have been managing multiple roles alongside their traditional role to focus on their own work more, or develop their replacement if they look for promotion or another challenge elsewhere.
Thank you for reading, see you next week.
Whenever you're ready, check out how I can help you further:
Football Fitness Mentorship Community: Are you a football fitness practitioner looking to accelerate your career? Join an exclusive online mentorship community of football fitness practitioners and access resources, educational content, 1:1 support and a worldwide network. The community is aimed at football fitness practitioners - whether you are a student with future aspirations to work in football, an early career practitioner still finding their way or experienced practitioners looking to progress their career further. Check it out here.