When Saul Evison’s England ambitions ended, he was left questioning what might have been. Now coaching the next generation and thriving on the pitch, he’s showing that setbacks don’t have to define a football career – they can reshape it.
Saul Evison’s football journey started by playing in his back garden with his two older brothers. His cerebral palsy, which affects the left side of his body, did not hold back the competitive sibling rivalries they had for the game. Evison says he and his brothers were made to play with a sponge ball ‘so it stopped us breaking loads of plants and windows’.
He may struggle to write with his left hand and have to lift lighter weights in his left hand than his right at the gym, but he says: “My disability does not bother me, it is what it is and in my head, I can do whatever anyone else does but I just might do it a bit differently.”
After a few sessions developing his footballing skills at a disability football club in Bexhill, a family friend recommended, knowing Evison’s passion for the sport, another disability football session at Brighton and Hove Albion Foundation.
“The coaches wanted to know me as much as they wanted to know them and that created a special bond that kept me going back,” he says.
Evison played football at Brighton’s talent hub, the first step of The FA’s talent pathway, with the end goal of playing for the England cerebral palsy football team. Evison worked tirelessly at the hub, battling the challenges his disability threw at him in football, before quickly being moved into the Regional Emerging Talent Pathway (RETP).
“I made it into the RETP when I was 11 or 12, I was really excited to go and I was constantly thinking about what I could do to get better,” he says.
“I was doing side steps every day to strengthen my weaker side, and instead of being top of the talent hub I was now the small fish in a big pond and trying to prove myself.”
Evison continued to train at Brighton’s talent hub whilst he was a part of the RETP. As if Evison could not get enough football, he was also playing for a mainstream team too, but he had to face the challenges the grassroots game posed to him.
“Some of the coaches did not know what to do with me in training or games or what position to play me in so it took some time for me to embed myself into clubs.
“But then I started to feel ‘normal’ as I was playing with my mates which was what I always wanted to do.”
Hard times ahead
Despite some of his friends or team mates ‘not understanding the level’ he was playing at and taking some time to develop in mainstream football, Evison’s trajectory looked positive on the England talent pathway. There was talk of Evison being moved into the National Emerging Talent Pathway (NETP) or even the England cerebral palsy development squad until…
“The big setback for me was Covid as it had a negative impact on me as I lost myself.
“I could not be bothered to do anything, I did not want to train or do school work and I got that bad I had to be sent into school during Covid for some sort of structure, so that hindered my development as when I went back to football. I did not have the same drive or ambition,” he says.
Like so many athletes in various sports, Evison says that this lack of drive meant he was removed from the talent pathway.
“I was at home when I found out and I was disappointed because from my point of view, I thought I was going to be okay as the coaches knew what I could do, but it was a real shock when I was released.
“I was disheartened but after a few months, the Brighton coach messaged my step-dad and said ‘that’s the best I’ve seen Saul play’, so it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I played with more enjoyment rather than trying to think about how I could improve all the time.”
What next?
You might expect players in this situation to just drop out of the game and struggle to recover after receiving arguably the worst piece of news in their football career, but what did Evison do?
After gaining his coaching badges, he wanted to give back to the club that helped him develop and now coaches at the Brighton and Hove Albion talent hub.
“I try to give players advice about how to progress to the next part of the pathway and that can mean telling them things they do not want to hear sometimes,” he says. “But as hard as that is, I am a living, breathing example of what happens if you do not have that ambition and I try to help them as much as I can.
“There are a few players with cerebral palsy at the talent hub, so I feel I have a special bond with them as I know the game more than most coaches as I play and live with the condition.”
Evison is not just coaching football to help him recover but also playing with a feeling of freedom.
“I really enjoy representing Brighton in the Cerebral Palsy Football League and I enjoy the fact that I play with other cerebral palsy players so I can prove that, although I did not get through the talent pathway into the England squad, I am still a top player.
“I just want to keep improving and challenging myself.”
Looking to the past and future
Whilst Evison says he has now come to terms with the news of not progressing through the pathway, he asks the question, what would I do differently?
“It is in the back of my head quite a lot still because although I could not change Covid happening, I would do things differently as I needed to be more mentally present to progress by training and working hard.”
With Evison inspiring the next generation of potential England cerebral palsy players whilst finishing as Brighton’s top goalscorer, he is arguably the right person to give advice about things not going the way you want.
“I would say do not doubt yourself just because one person told you can not do this or that, you can prove them wrong,” he says.
“You can change that outcome in the future and do the right things and you will get the results you want in the end.”
