SDS is delighted to be able to thank some great people in Volunteers Week, 1-7 June. Over this week SDS has highlighting volunteers who contribute so much to making sport happen at a local, regional and national level. Volunteers play a pivotal role in supporting sport specific programmes for athletes and participants with a disability across Scotland and today we feature a long serving volunteer who is currently the Head Coach of the Scottish Cerebral Palsy Football Squad.
Greig Taylor has been involved with the Scottish set up for over 13 years and has played an instrumental part in the resurgence of the sport in Scotland. Greig’s first involvement was as Assistant Coach with the squad that competed in the World Championships in Brazil in 2008, where the Scots finished in a very creditable 6th place. Two years later he was once again on the coaching team as Scotland hosted the European Championships in Glasgow, dramatically beating England to claim a 3rd place finish.
Following a spell coaching football in China, he returned to take the role of Head Coach for the team in 2016. By this time, the Scottish Cerebral Palsy Football programme had fallen on hard times and had not competed in a major competition since the International Football Cerebral Palsy Federation (IFCPF) World Championships in England in 2015. Greig made it his mission to rejuvenate the Scottish programme and has spent a vast amount of his own time delivering talks and presentations to promote Cerebral Palsy Football, speaking to potential funders and continually networking and scouting to identify new players who could benefit from this exciting format of football.
The result of this commitment from Greig and his team of equally committed coaches was a return to competition at the International Trophy CP Football Ciutat de Barcelona organised by the Catalan Sports Federation of Cerebral Palsy where the Scots finished in a very creditable 3rd place. This success was eclipsed when Greig and his players returned to Barcelona to compete in the 2019 competition, which they won defeating Italy, Northern Ireland, Catalonia and English club side, CP United in the process.
Buoyed by their newfound success, the squad upped their training in advance of a return to the international stage at the IFCPF Nations Championships in Sant Cugat, Spain which has subsequently bee postponed until 2021.
Greig has been the talisman behind the revival of the Scottish Cerebral Palsy Football programme and without his dedication, commitment and enthusiasm the Scottish programme would not be progressing in such a positive manner.
If you would like any further information in relation to Cerebral Palsy Football in Scotland please contact Scottish Disability Sport on 0131 317 1130