‘We text each other’: Forest Green’s Burchnall ready for Potter reunion

The first time Ian Burchnall and Graham Potter duelled on the touchline it was for a much-anticipated match between their respective Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University teams. Almost two decades on, the pair renew an old rivalry on Wednesday when Potter brings his Brighton side to Forest Green Rovers in the Carabao Cup second round.

“They were always good games,” Burchnall says. “A lot of the other students rock up and it could get a bit lively, because they’ve all been at the SU [student union] bar drinking. Whenever we played Leeds Met we couldn’t get the ball off them and that was Graham training a team twice a week. Even back then you could see his identity.”

Little did either think such a period would kickstart their careers in coaching. Burchnall was 22 and had just finished his sports science degree, his Uefa B licence and was juggling part-time roles coaching Leeds United’s under-nines with working on the club’s community programme, putting on sessions for disadvantaged children and getting results in the British Universities Premier Division North.

“All I wanted was to be able to have one job in football coaching rather than five to try and pay the bills,” he says. “I didn’t think that would be as a manager but it just evolved.” It is why being asked for autographs and photos feels so strange. “You’re thinking: ‘Oh my God, really? Are you sure?’”

The symmetry between Burchnall and Potter does not end in Leeds. They worked together on the England universities’ football programme through which Burchnall met Kieran McKenna, whose Ipswich side he faced this month, and when Potter left Östersund for Swansea after an extraordinary seven years in Sweden he recommended Burchnall to Daniel Kindberg, the