Failed Owls trials, Australia and an admission to mum: The making of Sheffield Wednesday secret weapon Jimmy Shan – Part One

Somewhere deep in a parallel universe, Jimmy Shan has his bare feet up on a porch, cold beer part-resting on a ‘dad bod’ belly as he toasts another long, hot day at work and looks out onto another Australian summer.
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Accent tinged with that piercing Aussie drawl, the 44-year-old – probably nicknamed ‘Jimbo’ down the local pub – will occasionally tell his mates he used to play a bit of soccer back home.

Had things gone just a little differently, he tells them from time to time, he could have ended up playing for Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a sentence greeted with knowing groans and rolls of eyes.

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In this universe, the one we’re living in right here and now, Jimmy Shan does work for Sheffield Wednesday, as a first team coach whose appointment to the role came shortly before a hugely impressive four-month unbeaten run that has placed the club as favourites for the League One title. The timing is no coincidence.

Sheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan    Pic Steve EllisSheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan    Pic Steve Ellis
Sheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan Pic Steve Ellis

But that portal to a very different life was only a couple of sliding doors away, he explains to The Star in a first in-depth interview looking back on a life so far spent in out of the game he fell in and out of love with.

“I only came back to gain a trade,” Shan smiles warmly – imaginary Aussie lilt traded for a Midlands one – while thinking back on a year spent living with an aunt and uncle on the banks of the Swan River in Perth.

“I came back to get some qualifications and the plan was to head back out there. I worked part-time as an electrician and studied that but when it came to it, the mindset of going back into college as a 21-year-old didn't really work for me.

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“That whole period of my life was totally unplanned. I nipped back from Australia to gain a qualification and the plan was to spend the rest of my years in Australia building a life there. I fell into coaching and as soon as I got back on the grass and that was my occupation full-time, I fell in love with the game all over again I guess.”

Sheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan    Pic Steve EllisSheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan    Pic Steve Ellis
Sheffield Wednesday Coach Jimmy Shan Pic Steve Ellis

‘Fell into coaching’ and ‘out of love’ indeed. Having never considered going back into the game he’d all-but-left several years ago as any sort of career option, a chance meeting with one of his old junior coaches saw him take a junior session at the training ground at Birmingham City, the club he grew up supporting.

Birmingham just happened to be running a ‘C-License’ coaching course at the time and on a whim Shan enrolled. Within a fortnight he was working full-time in the club’s community scheme – within five years he was assistant manager of the Blues academy, a remarkable, white-knuckle rise that highlighted his natural talent for player development.

But hadn’t meant to go that way.

Years earlier a teenage Shan was a diminutive technical midfielder who had developed a reputation that saw him balancing a prospective career at two leagues clubs; Walsall day-to-day and via a long-distance trek to Torquay United in the school holidays.

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A preoccupation with the size, strength and athleticism of players drafted into academies back then prevented a playing career, Shan feels, along with a freak injury at the age of 16 that tore away his dream. It’s was a bewildering and painful experience he feels has served him well later in life.

“As a family we were perhaps a little bit naive in that we were trying to keep things going with both clubs and looking back I think we would have been better concentrating on one or the other,” he said. “I was offered a YTS contract with Walsall and my last year at school I broke my ankle. They pulled back the offer and stuck me on a three-month trial.

“I’d left school and the thought process was always for me to go in at Walsall. For whatever reason, the three months turned into three weeks. And it was just three weeks of running. That was it for me at Walsall.

“Then it became a case of looking to get picked up and going on various trials.”

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One of those trials came at Sheffield Wednesday, where he first came across current academy chief Steve Haslam, an academy player at the time.

Driven up by his old man on the Thursday night having been spotted by an Owls scout sent to watch one of his teammates at Bilstone Town, he trained at Middlewood Road for two days before he was again pushed through the exit door without the opportunity to play in a match. It was a similar story elsewhere.

“I went to Lincoln City, Cambridge United, back down to Torquay and I went back in at West Brom as a 17-year-old,” he said. “Nothing quite worked out for me and to be honest I lost a little bit of love for the game through the rejection.

“I like to think as an adult I'm strong-willed and strong-minded and maybe I built those characteristics through those experiences of being a young player. But I did lose my love for the game trying to search for a career.”

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What becomes of a teenager torn from his burgeoning identity as a would-be footballer? Of a young man who had his dreams fixed on Wembley over Oxford or Cambridge? It was a case of ‘out to work, son’, as an air conditioning fitter with the Shan family’s kindly next door neighbour.

His mother, too, had ideas to correct the qualification-shaped hole on his son’s ghostly CV. It was decided that Shan would work part-time with his neighbour while – initially at least – heading back to college to improve upon the two Ds he’s collected in maths and English.

“I didn’t really have much of an option, to be honest,” Shan laughs. “Up until Christmas I re-sat my maths and my English. To this day I've always told my mum I got a C. I actually re-sat my exams and got two Ds - the same grade! She reads a lot of the stuff my name crops up in so she'll probably know all this now!

“But yes, I worked with the gentleman next door and it was a case of going into the real world and experiencing stuff that makes you grow up very, very quickly - most importantly, it gave me a bit of cash in my back pocket.”

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Other coaches have had careers in the game, years spent watching their managers and developing an understanding of the professional game from within.

But those real-world experiences Shan credits with the way he goes about his coaching career and with a down-to-earth and personable way with people that has made him hugely popular with Wednesday players and staff. In his early 20s, he was back in the door at Birmingham, with management experience in the Championship still to come.

In that parallel universe, Shan’s work ethic and friendly persona still exists, though probably benefiting an Australian family in need of re-wiring rather than the players at Sheffield Wednesday FC.

But in this one Jimmy Shan fell back in love with football. And right now, football is loving him right back.

This article is part one of a two-part series by Alex Miller in conversation with Jimmy Shan. Check back in the coming days for the second instalment – on Shan’s career in coaching via Birmingham City, West Brom and Solihull Moors, his coaching style and a decade-long working relationship with Darren Moore – at thestar.co.uk.

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