Working with Portsmouth Football Club

The whole point of this relationship is to inspire young people to see university as an option for them, and so I think it's particularly good that we have this scholarship available.

Part of the partnership is all about raising educational attainment within Portsmouth and giving people really, really good, exciting futures. And with Nadine now coming in, it's fantastic to have somebody local on our doorstep, have the opportunity to go to university and to be part of that is really, really special for the football club.

To start with, I honestly didn't think I'd get the scholarship. I applied for it, obviously just off chance and it obviously is an amazing opportunity. Doing graphic design, it is about reputation and getting your name out there and obviously being able to work with Portsmouth Football Club, it gives me work experience and obviously builds my skills working with an actual company. So that will helps a lot with the graphic design, learning the practical side.

It is a massive first step into my career of being a graphic designer. I’m looking forward to the social aspect, meeting a lot of new people from different places. Also getting the opportunity to learn a lot more skills within graphic design, obviously they have a lot more opportunities there with their facilities. The university’s all about giving opportunities for young people in the city to succeed and so, I'm really pleased for her that she's been successful and I think she'll have a fantastic time at university.

My name's Ollie Marsh, I studied Journalism at the University of Portsmouth and I now work at Portsmouth Football Club in the media team.

I've always felt that a club's media output has a big impact on the identity of the club, and certainly we bear in mind that everything we do relates to and contributes towards a brand. So there's a little bit more responsibility than it seems on the surface.

In the briefest possible terms, I look after all of the digital side of things for the club, so that includes their social media channels and their Youtube channel. I wasn't always interested in sports marketing. In fact when I started uni, I said that my goal was to become a local journalist and my dream was to work at a football club. So from my point of view, I'm hugely thankful that my dream has now come true. And definitely the course equipped us as well, because it gave us a really broad range of skills that can be applied to lots of different situations and it gave us a real insight into all areas of the media industry.

It was easy to secure a placement at Portsmouth Football Club but it wouldn't have been were it not for the university. The lecturers really go above and beyond to put you on the right path, get your foot in doors and it pays off because I'm here now. Having a placement here did build my confidence because it's such a difference having your work actually seen by an audience. It's all well and good handing in assessments and that can be fun, but when your work is actually seen by 100,000 people 0150 which is the audience that Portsmouth have on their social channels – it's such a buzz and it's fantastic to see all the engagement coming through and all the positive feedback.

I think there's definitely a parallel between the lecturers at university and the football manager. Obviously, football managers have usually had a career in the game and all of our lecturers had a career in journalism so you knew what they were talking about. And also, they could sometimes give us the hairdryer treatment if they needed to, to motivate us. And just generally they looked for the right tactics, the right game plan to get us all the results that we wanted and it's that level of commitment that we really appreciated. And certainly the university and the football club are both massive parts of the identity of the city, so I think it's an incredible thing that there's now a close link between them.