Pressing Matters : Mr Hurst

By Harry Morris

Recently I was lucky enough to interview Mr Hurst, a familiar face amongst Hampton boys, whether he teaches them PE or they see him on the fields every lunchtime and sports afternoon, coaching the sport that is his passion: football. 

He started coaching when he was at school, completing coaching badges, while also doing summer camps which provided him with valuable pocket money and invaluable experience. He has built up his portfolio steadily throughout the years; various stints of coaching at a wide range of clubs, schools and organisations, have all helped turn him into the coach he is today. At university he coached at Cheltenham Town, a well-established professional side, while he was completing his coaching and teaching degree. He then became an intern at Fulham with the U23s, where he had the prestigious title of the “bibs, balls and cones” person” , which as the title suggests, required him to help organise the drills, as well as being the on-hand assistant for the coach. During his tenure at Fulham, he got to see first-hand talent, such as Ryan Sessegnon, who is a well-respected player in the Premier League and has played for both Tottenham and TSG Hoffenheim before returning to his boyhood club Fulham last year. When asked to compare Ryan and ex Hamptonian Josh King who is also at Fulham, Mr Hurst noted that while he saw them both at different points, King was “a little bit better” given he was at a younger age. Hopefully these words will bode well for an illustrious career in first team football! 

Like many children across England, Mr Hurst joined a local side as a boy where he began to develop his love for football. Many Hamptonians will not know that Mr Hurst went to an international school and was playing in tournaments in different countries across Europe, which contained the very best international schools. Here, he reached the international schools’ equivalent of the ISFA final twice, but never quite crossed the line to actually win the trophy. 

On top of football, Mr Hurst also played rugby for his local club and in the second term for his school, as he just wanted to play “any sport I could get my hands on”, with tennis and baseball also featuring sporadically in his routine. However, once he reached university, he made the decision to focus on football, as at university you can’t play both football and rugby because they clash frequently, like at Hampton. He said he’d like to give coaching rugby a go, but admitted “there are a lot more qualified people at Hampton” than him!

More recently, Mr Hurst has been a coach for the ISFA representative sides, which he does when his Hampton commitments let him. ISFA contains the best private school footballers, including many Hampton students, whom Mr Hurst can keep an extra eye on. He mainly helps coach the U13 London representative team, but he is also a cover coach for all ISFA age-groups, so is called upon when he is needed for other teams. 

While you may assume Mr Hurst joined Hampton as a Sport Coach or a PE teacher, he actually joined Hampton not to do anything sport related, but rather to be a cover supervisor, though “[his] goal was always to try and become a PE teacher at Hampton”. He is very grateful to the then Head of PE Mr Bolton who helped him to do his teacher training here and he “hasn’t looked back since”.

After assuming the title of Assistant Director of Football in 2019, Mr Hurst has since led the school a long way, helping them win multiple ESFA and ISFA Finals across all age groups, as well as countless county cups and other competitions. Yet Mr Hurst enjoys all these successes equally, as what he really appreciates is seeing all the players “get a reward from all their hard work”; he also does not mind if they lose a final as at least “they’ve experienced it.” Although of course he doesn’t like seeing the players lose as “they’ve put so much hard work into it”, he still hopes that when they look back and reflect on it, they will see “that actually it was a really fun experience.” 

The reason for Hampton’s success over the past couple of years is much thanks to Mr Burke’s and Mr Hurst’s progression plan for each age group, which helps develop Hampton footballers into elite athletes and players. This, coupled with genuine enjoyment on the players’ side, hopefully helps them achieve some level of success along the way.

A reason perhaps why Mr Hurst is so dedicated to his job at Hampton, and all his coaching in general, is because he really enjoys it – he believes that “you shouldn’t do anything that you don’t enjoy or love”. He admits that while on a wet Wednesday afternoon he may not be initially up for coaching, he tells me that “as soon as I get to a training session and start setting up, that feeling goes away.”

While Mr Hurst remembers his playing days with fondness, he feels he made some errors in relation to his mindset and how he saw the game, and the therefore tries to stop the players he coaches from making these mistakes. When he was playing, he thinks that he “let the setbacks affect me more than they should have” as he remembers short periods of time where he would “look to blame someone else and maybe try to sulk a little bit.”   To young players who might not always be starting or getting picked for the team they want to be in, he says that you should “work harder when things aren’t going your way. Don’t take it personally or think you should be picked over somebody else. Just keep working hard and you know you’ll get the rewards from that.”

As a coach, Mr Hurst tries his best to first set an enjoyable environment, because he strongly believes players should “play football for enjoyment”. He builds on this by tailoring every training session to the age group, according to his and Mr Burke’s progression plan, whether that be more technical coaching for U12 and U13, or tactical with U14, U15 or senior football, where the main aim is to win. Mr Hurst helps to show off his array of coaching skills while always sticking to that all-important rule: making it enjoyable, so that as players get older they are still involved with football, whether that’s watching, playing, refereeing or just doing anything football related – this is “really important” to him.

Finally, Mr Hurst has a message he would like to share with Hamptonian footballers of all standards, one which you will have heard many times throughout this piece which is simply: “play for enjoyment”. When playing football, you could get bogged down with “What do I need to improve?” or “I’m working so hard at this and it’s not coming off, and I’ve had three bad games in a row”: Mr Hurst believes that when you start to think like that, you lose your enjoyment, which is the main driving force that helps you to progress and get better:

“You can make great friends from it, you get great experience from it, and the more you enjoy it, the more you will learn.”