Gary Paul Colin Childs is an English former professional footballer who played as a midfielder

Midfielder

A midfielder is an association football position. Some midfielders play a more defensive role, while others blur the boundaries between midfielders and forwards. The number of midfielders a team uses during a match may vary, depending on the team's formation and each individual player's role...

. He made 422 appearances and scored 45 goals in the Football League

The Football League

The Football League, also known as the npower Football League for sponsorship reasons, is a league competition featuring professional association football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest such competition in world football...

 playing for West Bromwich Albion

West Bromwich Albion F.C.

West Bromwich Albion Football Club, also known as West Brom, The Baggies, The Throstles, Albion or WBA, are an English Premier League association football club based in West Bromwich in the West Midlands...

, Walsall

Walsall F.C.

Walsall Football Club are an English association football club based in Walsall, West Midlands. They currently play in League One. The club was founded in 1888 as Walsall Town Swifts, an amalgamation of Walsall Town F.C. and Walsall Swifts F.C. The club was one of the founder members of the Second...

, Birmingham City

Birmingham City F.C.

Birmingham City Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, they became Small Heath in 1888, then Birmingham in 1905, finally becoming Birmingham City in 1943.They were relegated at the end of the...

 and Grimsby Town

Grimsby Town F.C.

Grimsby Town Football Club is an English football club based in the seaside town of Cleethorpes, in North East Lincolnshire, England, who compete in the Conference National. They were formed in 1878 as Grimsby Pelham and later became Grimsby Town...

.

Playing career

Childs was born in Kings Heath

Kings Heath

Kings Heath is a suburb of Birmingham, England, five miles south of the city centre. It is the next suburb south from Moseley on the Alcester Road.-History:...

, Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

. He started his football career as a trainee with West Bromwich Albion, moving on for a fee of £15,000 to Walsall where he played 180 games in all competitions. A move to Birmingham City followed for a fee of £21,500, and two seasons later he joined Grimsby Town.He helped Grimsby to two successive promotion

Promotion and relegation

In many sports leagues around the world, promotion and relegation is a process that takes place at the end of each season. Through it, teams are transferred between divisions based on their performance that season...

s, from the Fourth Division

Football League Fourth Division

The Fourth Division of The Football League was the fourth-highest division in the English football league system from the 1958–59 season until the creation of the Premier League prior to the 1992–93 season...

 in the 1989–90 season

1989-90 in English football

-European competitions:English clubs were still banned from competing in European competitions following the Heysel Stadium disaster.- First Division :...

 and from the Third Division

Football League Third Division

The Football League Third Division was the 3 tier of English Football from 1920 until 1992 when after the formation of the Football Association Premier League saw the league renamed The Football League Division Two...

 the following year

1990-91 in English football

The 1990–91 season was the 111th season of competitive football in England.- First Division :Arsenal won the league. Runners-up spot was achieved by Liverpool, who had led the table for much of the first half of the season but had been shell-shocked in February by the sudden resignation of manager...

.

Released by Grimsby after eight years and nearly 300 games, Childs was appointed player-manager of Wisbech Town

Wisbech Town F.C.

Wisbech Town F.C. is an English football club currently based in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. The club are currently members of the Eastern Counties League Premier Division and play at the Fenland Stadium.-History:...

, newly elected to the Southern League

Southern Football League

The Southern League is an English football competition featuring semi-professional and amateur clubs from the South West, South Central and Midlands of England and South Wales...

 Midland Division. He led the club to fifth place in the league and the second round proper of the FA Cup

FA Cup

The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...

 before poor form led to his dismissal. He then joined Boston United

Boston United F.C.

Boston United Football Club are an association football club based in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. They currently play in the Conference North. The club is known as 'the Pilgrims' in reference to the Pilgrim Fathers, who fled from Boston to the USA and founded Boston, Massachusetts. The club's...

 where he stayed until the end of the 1999–2000 season

1999-2000 in English football

-Premier League:Manchester United were crowned FA Premier League champions with an 18-point margin over runners-up Arsenal and with just 3 league defeats all season. This was despite their failure to retain the European Cup and withdrawal from the FA Cup in order to compete in the FIFA Club World...

.

Later career

He is a qualified coach

Coach (sport)

In sports, a coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.-Staff:...

, Community Officer at Grimsby Town F.C., and Sports Development Manager at Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education

Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education

The Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education is a further and higher education college in North East Lincolnshire, England.-Grimsby College of Further Education:...

.

External links