It is 2006, and a group of young people are in an area they shouldn’t be at the University of Hull. Perimeter fences around the site’s football pitches have been scaled and a kick-about has broken out among the trespassers.
“We’d sometimes get a bit of bother from the locals for getting up to no good,” explains Keith Morris, the university’s former head of sport. “It would be cat and mouse keeping them off.”
This is a great opportunity to strike a deal. The children can be invited back to take part in a coaching session and return the following day. “They all came back. Even more of them, so they must have told all their mates,” laughs Morris. “We must be nearly 20 years on from that and there’ll be blokes somewhere in Hull who’ve got no idea they were once coached by Chelsea’s manager.”
Graham Potter was in the middle of the negotiations, and the coaching session that ensued at Inglemire Road. Hull’s northern edge, the next day. “He must have done an hour or so with them, coaching them and helping them out,” says Morris, now head of sport at the University of York. “I won’t be the first to say this, but he cares about people. He tries to make a difference.”
Potter might not have left a lasting impression on those particular youngsters but his time spent as the University of Hull’s football development manager were the first steps on a coaching journey that has led him to become the head coach of Chelsea.
During three years in East Yorkshire, Potter became mentor and friend to a large number of students who universally still call him “Potts”.
