'I managed Bristol Rovers against Aston Villa': Meet Portsmouth kitman Shaun North - football's most unconventional coach

Norwich loanee Abu Kamara’s declaration that his flourishing performances had been inspired by Pompey’s kitman invariably attracted some good-natured ribbing.

Certainly within the Blues’ backroom there was amusement at the unassuming Shaun North’s very public elevation beyond his pay grade. Often teased over the neglect of his main responsibilities, it offered yet more ammunition.

This is football’s most unconventional coach, combining kit-washing duties with working on the training pitch with the League One leaders’ first-team.

Certainly the 62-year-old shouldn’t be stereotyped by his day job. After all, he possesses a Uefa Pro Licence - football’s highest coaching qualification.

Although Pompey’s kitman since September 2021, North previously managed Bristol Rovers against Aston Villa in the FA Cup, and was classmates with Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Ince and Nathan Jones on the same St George’s Park coaching course.

Wolves boss Gary O’Neil is among his many Pompey protegees during two decades at Fratton Park, even living with the then youth-team coach, while he's amassed in excess of 500 games as an assistant manager or first-team coach in the Football League and National League.

No wonder Blues head coach John Mousinho is entrusting North with developing his players.

‘I’m not a kitman, I hate it when people call me “the kitman”. No, I’m a coach - and I’m definitely more of a coach at Pompey than a kitman,’ North told The News.

‘I was working in the Academy when the kitman job came up. Well, I found out it paid more, so I went for it! The main reason, though, was it also allowed me to get out on the grass with the first-team and to travel with the first-team.

‘And, on top of that, I’m still a part-time coach with the under-14s, which suits me fine. I love coaching.

‘To be fair, they don’t treat me like a kitman. I sit in with the coaching staff planning sessions, I take training sometimes, while I also help warm-up the players on match-days. I’m more involved in football-related matters than a kitman usually is.

‘I must be the only kitman with a Pro Licence. When Danny Cowley first joined, I had the only Pro Licence at the football club. Initially, I was more qualified to coach than our new head coach and his assistant!

‘I was on the very first Pro Licence course held at St George's Park in 2013. It had been running for a while, but this was a big deal, they wanted to showcase it, so it was packed full of big names. How I managed to get on it, I will never know!

‘It was a group of 20 containing Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Stephane Henchoz, Paul Ince, Chris Powell, Mike Marsh and Graham Kavanagh. Neville couldn’t commit to it in the end, so Nathan Jones replaced him.

‘I was assistant manager at Bristol Rovers at the time, and the manager, Mark McGhee, got me on it, with the club funding it. However, midway through they didn’t renew my contract, so I ended up finishing the course while working with AFC Wimbledon’s under-23s.

‘And, as Rovers had let me go, I didn’t have to pay back the £9,000 the course cost!’

The North family moved from Leicester to the Isle of Wight in 1976 following the death of youngest son Richard through heart problems.

They bought the Coastal Buttery cafe on Ventnor’s seafront, yet dad Roger, previously an insurance salesman, began to establish himself as a highly-regarded coach, becoming the first person on the island to earn his full badge, now called the A Licence.

The second to qualify was son Shaun, who took out a £500 bank loan to fund the Lilleshall-based course, which also involved taking two weeks off work as a plasterer.

A much-travelled defender in local non-league circles, his clubs included Ventnor, Newport Isle of Wight, Cowes, Petersfield, Fareham and Gosport, yet he naturally gravitated towards coaching.

North began work in Pompey’s youth set-up in 1994, before taken on full-time in the summer of 1995 under Terry Fenwick.

During a total of 20 years, consisting of two spells, he oversaw the development of future Premier League stars O’Neil, Asmir Begovic, Matt Ritchie and Joel Ward, as well as current Blues skipper Marlon Pack.

He added: ‘Gaz (O’Neil) was at school in Bromley and would come to Pompey for weekends, except the club had no money to put him up - so he’d stay in our Gosport home on Friday and Saturday nights.

‘That lasted for a couple of years. We fed him and treated him like one of our own. He was football mad, which fitted in well with us, but broke a few lamps and ornaments playing football indoors with my sons. They’d use the sofa as a wall, trying to bend the ball around it.

‘I had Gaz from the age of 13, right the way to 18, and he was always going to be a footballer. The part I played was making sure he wanted to stay at Pompey because he enjoyed what we did. He looked forward to coming into training, knowing it was going to be different, challenging and disciplined.

‘All we did was guide them, he could always play. He’s doing brilliantly as a Premier League manager now, he was always technically clever and bright. As a kid, he was really small, yet realised he couldn’t rely on size and strength, so had to work things out. 

‘Matt Ritchie and Joel Ward were in the same age group, I had them from eight to 18. Every year there was a debate over letting Joel go, but Dave Hurst (youth development officer) fought like mad to keep him.

‘Joel barely played Sundays because he went to church, but he was always a hard-working kid and stuck with it. He played full-back, centre-back, midfield, up front, anywhere. Not technically the best, but was aggressive and had a great attitude.

‘Matt was so passionate about football, he always had a ball and regularly played above his age group. However, he was useless in training if you were doing drills.

‘You’d say “Matt, go and get yourself a drink while we do this”. Then you'd play it in a game and he’d do it fine, bang, bang, bang, everything you'd just worked on. Some people are like that.

‘Asmir came to me at 16 after moving over from Canada, yet couldn’t kick the ball out of the 18-yard box off the floor. His kicking was awful. Years later, in 2013 for Stoke, he scored with a clearance from his penalty area against Southampton in the Premier League!

‘As for Marlon, he initially played as a striker before moving into midfield. He’s always been a leader. He’s a Buckland boy, if you don’t lead when living around that area, you'll get trodden all over. You’ve got to have a bit of spirit, otherwise you’re in trouble aren’t you!

‘Footballers love playing football, that was the biggest thing about those lads. All we had to do was make sure they had some discipline and stayed competitive.’

Following Pompey’s 4-1 success over Reading a fortnight ago, Mousinho declared an impromptu day off for his Championship-chasing players the next Monday.

Nonetheless, some who didn’t start the Fratton Park clash elected to train, among them Kusini Yengi, Jack Sparkes, Josh Martin, Christian Saydee, Anthony Scully and Harry Jewitt-White - with North taking the session.

With numbers bolstered by Mousinho and first-team development coach Zesh Rehman to create a group of eight, their kitman put them through their paces for an hour, focusing on passing drills, keep ball and a small-sided game.

Get the latest Pompey headlines emailed to your inbox with our free newsletters Similarly, North has regular responsibility for overseeing Saturday morning training for those not involved on a first-team match-day, reflecting the trust Mousinho and his staff have in his coaching talents.

He said: ‘Yes I’m the kitman, but my brilliant assistants Kev McCormack and Ashleigh Emberson tend to do day-to-day stuff, although I do match-days and am in every day with them.

‘In terms of coaching, I take some group sessions, and should any of the lads want a one-to-one session after training, I’m available to work with them for 15-20 minutes.

‘I know Abu (Kamara) has mentioned my name, well at the time he wasn't comfortable playing on the left-hand side as a left footer, so I just gave him a bit of confidence. I also talked to him about how he can receive the ball.

‘Receiving it outside his body line meant people could come through and tackle him. Whereas if he gets the ball closer to his body, more centrally, then they can’t get to him and he’ll earn the foul.

‘I’ve recently been doing quite a bit of heading with Ryley Towler, working on the positioning of his feet. I’m not smashing them up in the air, just little throws for him to head. Heading 30 balls at the end of every training session for 10 minutes, totals 120 extra balls and 40 more minutes a week - so your heading has to get better.

‘Marlon (Pack) and Joe Morrell tend to want to hit some diags, so they’ll go out wide and I’ll punch the ball at them. They need to get it out of their feet, it's right foot, left foot. Colby Bishop and Connor Ogilvie came in a lot before the start of last pre-season training, texting to see if I was around to work on technical ball work with them.

‘Basically, all you do is give them a bit more confidence. They can do it, that’s why they’re at this level. I’ve said quite a bit to Abs (Kamara), don’t be afraid to fail because, the one time you get it right, something will happen, you’ll either create a goal or score one.

‘He’s playing well, that’s nothing to do with me, that’s Abs being Abs. When you talk about Gary O’Neil, Matt, Marlon, Joel, I had a lot to do with all of them when young - but, actually, it was nothing to do with me. They were always going to be good footballers.

‘I'd like to think they enjoyed what I did and how I did it, so stayed at Pompey. As a coach, you try to make people better, but it’s within them, they have the ability to do it.

‘The one who should get the credit is the gaffer, who's brave enough to play Abs. There have been times when the lad hasn’t done quite so well, yet John has stood by him, he’s the one who keeps believing.

‘The rest of us are little cogs in a wheel. It’s like a watch, you have the face which everybody sees, but there are so many little cogs behind it - and it takes just one of them to break for everything to stop working.’

After 12 years coaching in Pompey’s Academy, including serving as reserve-term coach when in the Premier League, North left in 2006 to become Oxford United's first-team coach under Jim Smith.

He later served as assistant at Torquay and Bristol Rovers, then moved onto Wimbledon, Cheltenham, Eastbourne and Eastleigh, before returning to Pompey’s Academy in 2016.

Aside from kit and first-team duties, he also spends three nights a week coaching the under-14s alongside Steve Stone, in addition to overseeing the youngsters' Sunday matches.

Certainly it’s a seven-day-a-week existence for North, who lives around the corner in Hilsea with Buster, his 14-year-old Olde English/American bulldog and a popular regular training ground visitor.

The next generation of the coaching dynasty is also secured, with son Shane working with the Academy’s under-12s and Baffins Milton Rovers’ first-team, as well as helping the unlikely kitman on match-days.

North added: ‘When I was caretaker manager of Bristol Rovers in January 2012, my first game was against Aston Villa in the FA Cup, live on ESPN.

‘Their manager Alex McLeish was under pressure, so put out a full-strength Villa team - Darren Bent, Emile Heskey, Stiliyan Petrov, Richard Dunne. We lost 3-1 and we also missed a penalty, but the lads did brilliantly.

‘I stayed on to take three league games, winning two and drawing one. So I actually have an unbeaten Football League record as a manager!

‘That was my only time in management. I loved it and would love to do it again, the chance to be in charge of your own destiny for once would be fantastic.

‘At the age of 62, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen now. But I’m still coaching, that's all I know. That and washing the kit.’