A couple of hours of football every morning followed by an all-vegetarian sit down lunch is a sharp contrast to traditional schools for the 80 or so kids attending the Euro-inspired facility on the Central Coast.

With a coaching staff including ex-Mariners players Andrew Gumprecht and Brad Porter, former Matildas’ great Joey Peters and Football Hall of Fame inductee now technical director Julie Dolan, it’s a serious business for all concerned.

CEO Paul Chapman invested two years into establishing the International Football School and expects student numbers to swell to 100 in the next couple of months as more people realise this was more than a pipe dream.

Most of the students are local, he said, but up to 20 travel from Sydney and Newcastle every day to the Kariong-based school in the Mt Penang Parklands.

“The football program is going great – they do two hours in the morning and the coaches have been really stoked to actually be able to stand there five days a week with the kids,” Chapman said.

“In just three weeks they’ve already seen a dramatic improvement in some of the kids and that’s just down to spending so much time with them.

“And we’re starting to integrate some other stuff around general fitness into the whole mix as well which you need to do as a complete package.

“Actually some of (the students) have found it a bit of a struggle because they’ve not actually worked this hard before.

“Five days a week, up to two hours a day football – it’s a big transition for them. A lot of them have gone from maybe two sessions a week to five and that’s a big step up.

“And often the intensity of the sessions is quite high because they’re dealing with coaches who are used to training at a high intensity.”

A group of students also spend two sessions a week under the tutelage of goalkeeping coach and Pararoos mentor Darryl Darke.

Recently an IFS open day was attended by Gosford City Mayor and Mariners stalwart Lawrie McKinna and Capital Football CEO Heather Reid – a sign perhaps that the school is being embraced by the game.

The school caters for 10 to 16-year-olds  and is modelled on similar institutions operating in France. A full-time chef works on site in an old cricket clubhouse that that has been refitted as a café.

Last November when au.fourfourtwo.com spoke with Gumprecht he was excited by the potential of such schools to revolutionise football in Australia.

“My professional career and my passion for football I put this down to the way I grew up in East Germany,” he said at the time.

“There were football schools everywhere so you were able to be trained by the best of the best and also do your schooling.

“In the modern world if you want to become a professional footballer you need to put extra effort in. Parents need to be committed and the young players need to be committed – there is a lot of pressure.”

The next challenge for the IFS is to find a regular outlet for games. Interest has already come from Wollongong and Sydney, and Chapman sees the main avenue for matches through academies, clubs and representative teams.

“That’s the next big step,” he said. “We’ve already started organising games for the students. There are lots of clubs and teams that are super keen to play us so that’s exciting.”