EDWARDS IS THE BRAINS BEHIND STUDENTS’ RISE
ALL footballers are thick. It was a jibe Christian Edwards has heard many times, said in jest and perhaps with some justification. There is often an element of truth in stereotypes; the dressing rooms the former Wales international had been in from the Premier League to the Conference would have reminded him of that.
Had the centre-back chosen a different path, taken a different route, perhaps there wouldn’t have been an easy response to the person sat next to him at a dinner function who knew full well of Edwards’ playing days.
What perhaps they were not aware of was his life after football. Of how he had gone from defender to doctorate.
“It’s not the traditional route most footballers pursue: finish playing, assess options, sit back on the host of money they would have earned and pretend to do their badges before being an agent somewhere,” says the former Swansea City man who reached the Premier League with Nottingham Forest. “I guess it’s very different to most. I’m proud of it, although it’s not something I went out to pursue. It just happened.”
Edwards is sat in a study room at Cardiff Met’s Cyncoed campus as he speaks earlier this year. He does so as a lecturer in coaching science with letters before and after his name, all less than ten years after sitting the same room as a run-of-the-mill student where his 304 league appearances and four Wales caps meant very little to others.
“I don’t think anyone knew who I was, which was great. I could get on with things,” he recalls, although accepts his age – 30 at the time – and his standard 6ft 2in centre-back frame made him stand-out somewhat.
Although perhaps he always stood out. He had joined the Swans at 13, his talent enough to see him join their youth-ranks full-time at 16 where he admits he did agonise over giving up education but eagerly snapped up the invitation to study for A-Levels one day a week. Leaving for Bristol at 5am on a day-off, he was the only player to do so.
“In that apprentice dressing room with 20 other boys I was classed as busy b******s,” he smiles. “It was frowned upon, you should just get your head down and play football. I still did that, I still enjoyed that and don’t get me wrong, I was never a bookworm, but I enjoyed education. I guess there was a stigma when it came to that.”
It would have been prevalent at the time, the lower leagues Swansea operated in and before a shift in attitudes towards young footballers.
“I had moved into digs and the family there were quite studious and they would always ask about college as much as the football,” he says.
Edwards does know why he eventually returned to the books after his career took off. One of two youth players offered contracts, within three years of his 1995 debut as a 19-year-old he had won Wales caps and was in the top division after a £300,000 move to Forest and, understandably, education took a back seat.
“I attempted an Open University degree once or twice,” he says. “Things snowballed, the Premier League and all that goes with it arrived and I had some great experiences, but it was only towards the end of my career I thought about things again. I was at Bristol Rovers and I’d pretty much fallen out of love with the game.”
There had also been mystery blackouts, the first suffered while driving to training with Bristol causing a minor accident. Extensive scans failed to discover the cause apart from ruling out anything serious. Having spent all his adult life heading away footballs, he jokes it was his brain saying enough was enough.
Still, Edwards describes the moment to change direction as a snap decision. He missed the big money era (“the gravy train called just after my era”). He had been well looked after, not enough to not work again, but enough to try something different.
“It wasn’t the dressing room I knew,” he says on the first days as a degree student with half an eye on a lifelong wish to become a PE teacher. His first children were born during his three years of study as he combined playing and coaching at Welsh Premier League Aberystwyth Town but the split times between fatherhood, football and his new world still saw him gain first-class honours. Doors opened, a masters followed, part-time lecturing roles where he says he found a buzz akin to the nerves and adrenaline of playing.
His time in football wasn’t ignored; his masters was based on managing change within sides, something he felt himself when Paul Hart’s arrival at Forest saw him go for youth over the more senior, better-paid players at the City Ground. “Michael Dawson replaced me and he hasn’t done too bad,” smiles Edwards.
Indeed, the opportunity to study for his PhD leant on his time in dressing rooms.
“But it wasn’t the type of research applied to football,” he stresses. “It wasn’t physiology or biomechanics, it was actually sociology and the study of humour as a critical component of interactions in every day life.
“I’d seen it in my own career, that banter if you want, how it shaped me as an individual and a coach and how I interacted. The jokes are different but the same 20 years on. The class clown is still there. You’ll have a Roger Freestone at Cardiff Met as much as you had one at Swansea City.”
Having played under the likes of characters Dave Bassett, Ron Atkinson and – more pertinently – Bobby Gould, he has obvious expertise and Edwards’ eyes light up when discussing, explaining how he believes it is under-researched with only one other academic in the world studying the subject from a sporting perspective.
“It’s not something I’m stopping, I want to carry on working towards it in the future,” he adds, despite gaining his doctorate late last year. “During it there were times where I wondered what I was doing and if it was ever going to end. I wasn’t sure to begin with when I was asked. Perhaps it’s a way of hanging onto that dressing room.”
They are experiences he has not left simply in the textbooks. Edwards was asked to combine his studying and lecturing with leading the university’s football teams as a director of football, including the senior side that have made it t o the Welsh domestic top-flight. Only denied promotion on goal difference the previous season, the facilities of the university formerly known as UWIC have matched the impressive strides on the field and will take on Airbus next weekend as the Welsh Premier League gets underway.
It has all been achieved with only students playing – in fact they pay to play, stumping up their £150 membership funds like the rest of the students – where Edwards notes the shift in attitudes with young footballers. Among his squads (there are also university midweek leagues to compete in) there are youngsters released by clubs who find the transition to education far easier than he might have managed by going, as he puts it, “the long way round”.
“My old football mates sometimes laugh at me being called a doctor and take the mick, but if I’ve flown the flag a little then great and getting the PhD was a proud moment.
“In fact, I gave my supervisor for the thesis, Dr Robin Jones, my first Wales shirt because becoming a doctor far outweighs playing for Wales. I was good at football, so people said, and there was an expectation to achieve. There was no expectation for when I started out, a 30-year-old former footballer, to do this. PhDs are supposed to be for clever people.” Not for “thick” football
ers.