Grimsby Town Football Club is delighted to announce that Giles Coke has returned to the Club as Player Development Coach.
The 36-year-old originally joined the Mariners as a player in February 2021, penning a new one-year deal in the summer of 2021 and played a pivotal role both on and off the pitch in the Club’s promotion back to the Football League. During his time as a player, Coke made a total of 42 appearances, scoring a single goal.
Manager Paul Hurst spoke to GTTV this afternoon and was impressed with Coke’s attitude and potential which led to him offering the former midfielder a role on his coaching staff.
“We had spoken at various points last season about Giles and how perhaps to see a potential way to keep him at the football club, albeit as it was getting closer to the end of the season, it wouldn’t be a player for the first team and then just chatting.
“We want to develop and grow, we talked about giving the younger players a longer period of time to develop and as a result, we want more staff ideally to help with that and Giles is someone that I felt would fit perfectly in that. That will be part of his job, to help the young lads, almost be a bit of a mentor and start his coaching journey. He will help Ben Davies and a couple of the other coaches with that group in particular once we have come through pre-season, he will also be with us at times with the first team, so it is a bit of a fluid role, but they’re a couple of main aspects to it.
“He will also be speaking to the first team players about life after football and trying to prepare people for that. He has experienced that and has been doing some work through Jason at the club, so that is something we want to look more into, the player care which will come into that.
“I think it’s a nice role for him to come into, but it isn’t just giving people jobs for the sake of it, we want to make sure he is a valuable asset to us and it comes back to people and I just thought he was too good of a person to just let go and thankfully, we have found an opportunity to make that work and for him to continue his allegiance with Grimsby Town, a club that he loves. I have to say, towards the end of the season when he wasn’t particularly playing much, the way he was involved with the group was really positive with myself and Chris in particular and that just emphasises the reason we wanted to keep him around.”
Giles also spoke to GTTV this afternoon following training at Cheapside this afternoon. You can catch his interview in full below. Be sure to subscribe to our official YouTube channel and never miss an upload!
