CHESTER FC and Premier League giants Liverpool are among the first clubs to sign up for an online program which aims to revolutionise the way football coaches plan their training sessions.

Magnus Alford’s Sports Session Planner is out to ‘reinvent the chalkboard’ by allowing coaches at all levels of the games – including Chester manager Neil Young – to set up and store specific programmes in state-of-the-art 3D.

Alford, 35, who is director of sport at Christleton High School, said: “Our website www.sportsessionplanner.com has been live since July and in that time we have had seven well-established Premier League and Football League clubs sign up, two soccer clubs in the US, one university and one school.

“It is a unique product and one that been designed to help coaches plan their sessions quickly, but also store them on a powerful database with stunning visuals and aesthetics.

“For example, Neil Young and his team can now record all their training sessions, set-pieces and physical programmes in our session library, which should help them stay highly organised throughout the season.

“We believe we have designed a product that is flexible and easy to use and which caters for coaches of all ages, abilities and those who are not particularly computer literate.”

Alford, of Chorlton-by-Backford, was inspired to create the Sports Session Planner through his experiences of teaching at Christleton High and after 11 years as a coach at the Liverpool FC academy.

Alford, a UEFA ‘A’ licensed coach who managed the Anfield club’s under 13s before leaving last May, said: “There was never any computer software with state-of-the-art visuals which you could save on to a club database to enable us to save and share football sessions.

“Equally, I know there is a requirement on a national level in the GCSE PE course, the junior and community Sports Leaders awards and BTEC national diploma sports qualifications for school students to produce sports sessions plans.

“At the moment this is done by drawing the sessions out on paper. However, these students have been brought up during the age of the computer. Therefore we thought this computer programme will not only be used by clubs and coaches but also by educational establishments.”

You can visit the Sport Session Planner at www.sportsessionplanner.com.

A demo of how to use the planner can be viewed by visiting www.youtube.com and searching for ‘sportsessionplanner’.