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Football careers, like life, don't always run in penalty box to penalty box straight lines.

Take Bristol City head coach Lee Johnson. As the Robins boss reaches his third anniversary in charge at Ashton Gate today with City in the playoffs and doing nicely, he also set the club's record for the most consecutive league defeats just two season ago. How does that work?

And so it is for a contact of his: Dave Hockaday, the former Leeds United boss who knew Johnson as a midfielder at Watford and who now rules the roost at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College as the head of male football.

Hockaday says he has taken time to 'heal' from his experiences at Elland Road four years ago where he was only in charge for a mere 70 days. But now he is loving life turning around teenager's fortunes up in Filton.

(Image: Dougie Allward/JMP)

And how!

It was Hockaday who first spotted a certain Chelsea-linked young Bristol City starlet Antoine Semenyo in London and brought him back to SGS WISE campus - the former Filton College - via a football talent day.

"My thing is identifying talent, recruiting that talent and then developing that talent to its full potential," says Hockaday with a steel look in his eye. "That's what I'm good at."

"Towards the end of my coaching career when I went back into senior football it got a bit mad and I was always going to do this. I was waiting for somewhere like this," he adds and explains that the prior success of his football academy at Cirencester in the late 1990s led to contacts that saw him recruited elsewhere.

"When I came here just over two years ago it was languishing. The facilities here are incredible and yet we weren't fulfilling our potential as regards recruitment and quality of player. I've come in and very quickly I've turned it around."

Sweet SGS success

It's all down to hard work and recruitment according to the 61-year-old.

"I've been out there making contacts with all the people of Bristol, and in a very short space of time we've had a massive turnaround," says Hockaday (pictured below with our man), and who has overseen his SGS side beat Crystal Palace, Sunderland and other top level academy sides at the same age levels this season. Or even higher.

(Image: JMP 2019)

"Whereas we play on a Wednesday in the Category 1 league, the best league we can in the area - I think there are six regional Category 1 leagues - we had no points when we arrived and were bottom. Flip it two years and we're now equal top and we've drawn once and we've won every other game. We're flying.

"We're now as good in the country as anywhere regarding results and scorelines. But that's not why I'm here.

"We also play in the South West Counties for U18s teams - the best non-pro leagues and we won the league without losing a game and were invincible last season," he explains.

Hockaday goes on to reveal his mentoring is key. While professional clubs have untold specialists in many fields that see players fall through the cracks, he is able to offer a one-stop solution for smaller numbers. His pupils also need to enjoy what they're doing.

The boys can study whatever they like at SGS rather than be shoehorned into other courses as happens elsewhere.

"Not all of them want to go into sports science. One might want to be a scientist, another a sparky, another a plumber," he says of the off-field learning.

Hunger and belief are key however, regardless.

Hockaday helps pick up "damaged" lads and helps to get them back to their best.

But it's a tough regime as the ex-right-back puts his boys through a punishing fitness workout that is tougher than anything equivalent at professional level - and Hockaday knows from having been there.

So much so that the former Kidderminster Harriers boss reckons his college is now the best at producing football talent.

"We're now playing our U17s in the u18s league and we're still unbeaten," he regales.

"We're pushing and pushing and I'm here to produce players. If we keep winning and we win things, great, but I'm here to produce players.

"In the last 16 months I've had six lads join the pro game. That shouldn't happen. It's crazy. It should be pretty impossible. You might get one in five years. We've had six in two years.

"The first lad went to Forest Green Rovers but I actually advised him not to go because my idea was 'give me the boys for a full year' and then we can get them in as pros rather than as scholars, which I don't think that highly of.

"A lot of pro clubs sign up lads as scholars to make up the numbers. If a pro club commits itself to a pro contract then that tells me that there's a definite pathway for them.

"So the first lad went and signed a two-year scholarship and then five lads have now signed pro deals. That's ridiculous," explains Hockaday.

Developing Antoine Semenyo

(Image: JMP 2019)

"We had Antoine Semenyo, he's gone - and he's someone that I found. He was someone who was lost in London. And I've kept tabs with him," says Hockaday of his former pupil now making the headlines.

"He played a year for us, SGS, in the South West Counties league.

"l found him at a training day at Bisham Abbey - he turned up with a lot of people. He was about 16.

"The boys that catch my attention are like an itch - I liken them to an itch because I can't get rid of them. And he was an itch.

"He was disheartened as he'd been at a few pro clubs, and bounced here, there and everywhere, and he was playing in the wrong position and he had it all wrong.

"Because he was the best player at his school, he played midfield. He's not a midfield player. A big thing is seeing the potential and then it's asking the players to find their identity, then it's getting those players to change their identity of themselves.

"But it's no good me saying it. He has to say it and he has to believe it.

"So eventually he believed that he was a striker and then 'oh my goodness'. He was uncontainable. Nobody could play against him," explains Hockaday with a chuckle.

(Image: Rogan/JMP)

"Bristol City and a lot of other clubs were looking at him and we give them a proper pre-season - the boys will be in every day. My players aren't paid. They do this through their hunger and desire.

"We beat MK Dons, Bristol City, Swindon, Falkirk U20s, we drew with Reading 1-1... We were seriously competitive. And off the back of that teams were offering Antoine a two-year pro deal.

"Eventually he's gone to Bristol City and he made his debut at the final game at the end of last season and I was there.

"I still keep in touch with him two or three times a week because once a boy has worked with me I don't let them go. I'm always there to help mentor them.

"It will be interesting to see how things play out," says Hockaday, after Chelsea made a £2m bid for Semenyo in January.

Saikou Janneh is a BIG talent too

(Image: JMP 2019)

With Torquay United's Saikou Janneh it was something different.

"He played with Bath City but every time we played against them we smashed them, and yet he always caused us problems," explains Hockaday.

"I was talking to him and I get on brilliantly with Saikou. Bristol City again came in, got him and sent him out on loan. He's a very good player and done really, really well.

"I'd love to see those two play together. We've also got Tom Harrison, who again we got into this head and helped him become a centre half but his identity was all wrong.

"He's gone on loan to Weston-Super-Mare. Three of the best pros at Bristol City u19s are SGS which we're really proud of," he explains.

And it's not just to Bristol City profiting with one player having joined Barnsley, another having recently gone to Brighton and another at Forest Green Rovers.

"Everyone who comes to me is a late developer - either tactically, technically or emotionally. I had one lad who it was almost like taming a wild horse."

Hockaday is intense and has a stern look to his eye. He doesn't dwell, is wiry thin and looks driven. He radiates passion.

We don't think the conveyor belt of his talent will stop any time soon.

Future Robins strike force?

(Image: JMP 2019)

We ask how high the pair - Semenyo and Janneh - can go. Premier League?

"When I saw Antoine I knew he was a talent. When I saw him as a striker I went: 'Oh my goodness.'

"As he got better and better you reach for the stars... His potential is ridiculous. He's barely 19 and he's an absolute specimen.

"To be fair I prefer to talk about the two of them. Antoine is smoother on the eye and a slightly bigger physical specimen. Good right foot, good left foot.

"Saikou is hungier. There's an edge to him. He does similar things. The two of them together? I would not want to play against them.

"They're both hungry, they can both physically compete, they're both good in the air, they both can shoot off either foot... They both score goals and they really do have everything.

"And as they're growing and developing as people what shines out to me is their humility as lads. As human beings they are absolute diamonds.

"And I can't stress this enough: some people are arrogant, some are lazy, some are this and that. But those two kids if anyone deserves to go all the way on character then it would be those two.

"They are absolutely flipping diamonds and they will go a heck of a way," explains Hockaday.

Six upcoming football talents with SGS links