Hart to heart
If you think the best players in world football sometimes struggle to score past Joe Hart, imagine what it could have been like in Sunday League! Sky Sports sits down with Man City and England’s No.1 along with his boyhood coach, Dave Timmins, to learn about the art of goalkeeping
Friday 25 April 2014 14:56, UK
Joe Hart will be attempting to stop the likes of Luis Suarez, Edinson Cavani and Mario Balotelli from scoring at this summer’s World Cup but it could have been a much different story for the England goalkeeper.
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As a kid, today's Manchester City No.1 almost walked away from a potential career in professional football after becoming disinterested at hometown club Shrewsbury Town.
Hart, instead, prefered to play Sunday League with his mates and so might not have been preparing for this weekend's game at Crystal Palace in the Premier League title race.
However, Dave Timmins, a goalkeeping coach at Shrewsbury who is now on the staff at Tranmere Rovers, did not close the door on the youngster's potential return and it proved a successful tactic.
As part of Gillette’s Great Start programme, Sky Sports recently sat down with Hart and Timmins to talk about the former’s career, the art of goalkeeping and the importance of good coaching.
What is your backstory together? Joe, when did you first start working with Dave in the early stages of your career?
Joe Hart: “I have known Dave since when I first got involved with Shrewsbury Town when I was about nine or 10 years old. I got involved with Shrewsbury but I did not really enjoy it, because it felt a bit serious for me at that age. I decided to leave it and play Sunday League with my friends. I always spoke to Dave a lot, because I played for my county and where I am from he was involved with anything to do with goalkeeping. We always talked a lot and he left an open invite for when and if I wanted to take it up again to play for a club. I went back to Shrewsbury Town at the age of about 14 and it went from there.”
So, Dave, if it was not for you, England’s goalkeeper at the World Cup this summer might have been playing Sunday League somewhere instead of being in Brazil. How did you convince him?
Dave Timmins: “I had never looked at it like that! I suppose we made the training sessions fun. When it was at Academy level or, as it was then, Centre of Excellence, I always pushed Joe. But I knew that I also had to make it fun. The pitches in those days were rubbish and if it rained it would get very muddy. From a goalkeeping perspective, the muddy pitches meant Joe could throw himself around. Taking all the mechanics and coaching terminology out of it, basically, he just threw himself around and had fun. At the same time, we at Shrewsbury Town knew he was a good goalkeeper, because he kept the ball out of the net and had a passion for keeping it out of the net.”
Dave, Joe has told Sky Sports in the past that being a goalkeeper is not fashionable and there is ‘not a lot of love for goalkeepers’. How do you make goalkeeping interesting?
DT: “I totally agree. I think Joe has made goalkeeping interesting, because of how he is. I used to get my dad to take me everywhere to watch Ray Clemence, Peter Shilton, Paul Cooper and John Burridge, who was a head-case when he was at Wolverhampton Wanderers. They were all characters and Joe is a character. Peter Schmeichel was a fantastic goalkeeper but he also had a presence and an enjoyment of keeping the ball out of the back of the net. When I started coaching, I thought, ‘how can I get that across?’, because it is not all about drills. I think a young player also has to firstly want to b
