Vicky Smith: My name is Vicky Smith. I'm the Sports physiologist for the PGMOL, who are the Professional Game Match Officials Limited. We are sports physiologists, so that covers strength and conditioning, nutritional support, physical fitness, training support for the match officials from the Premier League down to the Conference in English football.
Francis Bunce: My name is Francis Bunce, I work as a sports physiologist alongside Vicky Smith and then Simon Breivik. Our job is to make sure that the referees that work in English football are maximally prepared for performance; make sure that they're obviously fit enough and that they can cope with the demands of the game as well as hopefully being there to make the best decisions possible on a match day and help with the running of the games that we all love.
Adam Burton: My name is Adam Burton; I'm the Lead Physical Performance Coach at Game Changer Performance here at St. George's Park. I deliver the physical performance services on the PFA residential rehab programme. Career highlight for me was working at Leicester City; so I've supported the club since I can remember and I was fortunate to be there when the first team won the Premier League.
Emily Cain: So I am a PhD researcher in the physical performance department for the FA and then I'm also a physical performance coach with the England Women Under-19 team. I'd say the best thing about working at St. George's Park is when we have the England teams here and so when they're training out on the pitch and we've got them in the gym and it's just a bunch of teams in together, the place is absolutely buzzing.
Vicky: Working at St. George's Park is amazing and I think the facilities and the environment that we're in is extremely professional and the right place to be for our kind of group.
Francis: Working at St. George's Park is brilliant. We get to bring the match officials here every two weeks from the different groups, the Premiership and the Championship and it's great to be in such a sort of world class leading environment.
[On-screen title] Using what we learned at Birmingham
Emily: So the biggest thing that I feel like I took from University of Birmingham was the ability to critically appraise anything, so whether that's something I've read, a piece of research, or just information at a conference. So one of the big things I think all the lecturers really drilled into us was don't read something and think it's the gospel truth and really make sure that you can understand the limitations of a piece of work and know how that's going to affect the outcomes of that piece of research specifically and draw your own conclusions.
Adam: The major thing that was drilled into us from lectures is that: "Here is the information, but it's you, your responsibility to go out and apply it." So yes, they'll give you all the information you need, but if you don't take ownership of your responsibilities, your job role, your academic role then you potentially are not going to succeed. So they're very clear on that and instilling that you had to go and find experience if you were to make it in this industry, because it is very tough, it's a tough market.
Francis: Academic knowledge is the main thing that I got from my time at the University of Birmingham. Alongside that, it was being around a lot of other people that are really driven within the sports science profession wanting to get jobs, obviously within sport science, and that helps add the motivation to want to work in this environment.
Vicky: Soak up as much information as you can from an early age, learn, be prepared to do the hard work, do the time, do the hours in intern type roles because they are extremely competitive, and everybody's out for them. So take what you can, work hard in them, soak up all the information from everybody around you and then use it to shape your own views and make yourself the sports scientist that you want to be.
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