A NEW scheme could land young people in the county a career with Oxford United Football Club.

A course run in conjunction with Abingdon & Witney College will offer 10 coaching apprenticeships for 16 to 19-year-olds.

The 18-month placement will give students the skills to be ready for employment and could lead to a job at the club.

The college will also offer a business administration apprenticeship for 12 months.

Community operations manager Caroline Robbins said: “There are a lot of careers in football that people don’t often think about.

“There’s event management, coaching, refereeing, there’s a whole host of different careers. We are working to support young people into new careers by offering 11 new apprenticeship programmes.”

She added: “We would like to think that anyone doing the apprenticeship could go straight into employment either with us or someone similar to us.”

The coaching course would feature the apprentices shadowing the Oxford United first team to see how the club is run and on completion they would be fast-tracked on to a Level 2 FA coaching qualification course.

They would also finish the 18-month course with a Level 2 NVQ in activity leadership, have worked with people with learning disabilities and have learned first aid and safeguarding.

The club said its initiative would ensure the club had quality coaches for years.

Miss Robbins said: “We think it’s incredibly important to invest in the future of football. The coaches that we currently have are brilliant but they won’t always be there. We have to make sure there are new coaches, new talent coming through – in the same way we do with players, we have got to do with the workforce.”

She added: “And if we can invest in local young people to make that happen then all the better.”

The club said the apprenticeships were more likely to lead to roles in its community development in the immediate future.

Roles that could be filled by the apprentices include female development officer, schools participation officer, social inclusion officer and disabilities officer.

On the business administration course the successful candidate will learn how to run the business arm of the community trust .

The apprentices will be paid £7,400 a year by Oxford United and the programmes tailored according to which field the apprentices want to go into .

The deadline for applications is October 25, and the club is keen to get successful candidates started as soon as possible.

For more information or to apply for the scheme go to abingdon-witney.ac.uk/apprenticeships