Psychology graduate shoots for FA Cup glory

The 29-year-old says: “Professional football is a very pressured environment and you can become very stressed based on results, injuries and the performance levels of ourselves. So in the difficult times I find I use what I learned in Counselling Psychology to speak to my teammates and empathise with them if they are maybe not feeling very confident. Similarly when they are confident and playing very well, I try to help keep them feeling that way as it benefits the whole team.

“I have also found more personally that psychology and performance in sport are very closely linked. I find that your mindset when playing a game, especially at a professional level, can massively affect the outcome of a game. I tend to therefore try to approach every game in as close to the same mindset as possible to get as close to the highest performance levels I can achieve from myself.”

“I feel I would be able to help others with my experience playing as a professional and be able to relate to some of the pressures that come with playing at a professional level,” he explains.

“Nowadays there are a lot more pressures compared to when I first started to play with the growth of social media and the extra scrutiny that that can bring after a game. I also feel other sportsmen would be a bit more open to speaking to someone who has been there an experienced what they may be feeling. If not in a sporting environment though, I would still like to use my degree as a future career path.”