Shrewsbury Town's John Filan hopes to inspire keepers into coaching

Ex-Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic shot-stopper Filan joined Salop earlier this month to work alongside John Askey, having been with him at Macclesfield.

And he is determined to make his mark at the club – to prove former keepers should not just be pigeonholed into becoming goalkeeping coaches.

“One thing that does surprise me is that there aren’t many ex-goalkeepers involved in coaching,” said Filan.

“Just as the position at the back of the team, watching structures, thinking about the defensive structures and attacking structures, dealing with those from a position at the back of the game – I’m surprised that more haven’t got involved or haven’t been allowed to.

“A few of them would like to and would be good at it.

“But I think the status of an ex-goalkeeper wanting to be a goalkeeping coach is still around and that’s something you’ve got to fight.

“I think it is something I’d like to shake off. I know through my experience when I came back, even on some of the courses, you spoke to governing bodies and straight away it was ‘John Filan – the goalkeeper’ and they’d send you to the goalkeeping license course.

“I would think ‘hold on, that’s not what I’m asking about, I want to do the outfield coaching’.

“There are people about who’ve done well as ex-goalkeepers but they’re limited in their numbers.”

He added: “There’s nothing wrong as an ex-goalkeeper to be a goalkeeping coach, I fully understand that. There’s some great ones out there.

“It’s just for myself, the challenge (of being an assistant) and the work that it involves is something I’m more interested in.”