Celtic Success Story

Nicola Donnelly is living the dream, working for her club as a Celtic FC Foundation coach, having initially come into the club as a participant on one of their courses.

- Paul Cuddihy

NICOLA Donnelly’s enthusiasm for her work with Celtic FC Foundation is infectious, as is her passion for Celtic. They’re both evident as soon as she starts talking.

Every supporter will, at one stage, have harboured dreams of pulling on the green and white Hoops and playing for the team. For most, unfortunately, that remains a dream.

However, working for the club that you support is the next best thing and, as Nicola admitted on more than one occasion during her interview with the View, she has her dream job, working as a community coach with the Foundation.

It’s a role she has enjoyed for the past two-and-a-half years, and her own journey is a Foundation success story, one that she’s happy to pass on to others in the hope that they, too, will see the benefits that can come from the courses that the Foundation run.

“I had been unemployed for a while and it was the Job Centre who told me about Celtic FC Foundation and what they did,” Nicola explained. “So I started on the BT Back To Employment project, which was the first ever one they ran.

“I was just desperate to get back into work and because I’m a massive Celtic fan, that was a big bonus.

“It was a 10-week course, and I was there every single day – I was always early – and I kept saying to the coaches who were running the course that they had an amazing job and I’d ask them how they got involved with it.