The Conversation Circle™

The Player Care Group (TPCG) is proud to introduce the Conversation Circle™, a practical and player-centred offline tool designed to strengthen conversations between young people and the trusted adults around them.

Originally created in 2021 by Natalie Wood – Head of Player Care at Shrewsbury Town FC and former Head of Player Care at Swansea City AFC – the tool began as the Wellbeing Wheel. TPCG acquired the rights in 2025 and has since collaborated closely with Natalie to refine and expand it for wider club use.

When Natalie first joined Swansea City, she quickly recognised a gap: while countless tools existed to maximise on pitch performance, very few supported young people off the pitch – where their wellbeing, identity, and personal growth often shape their long-term success. To address this, she designed the Wellbeing Wheel as a structured yet approachable way to check in with players, track their experiences throughout the season, and give them a safe way to express how they were feeling. Over time, the tool evolved to reflect recurring themes, challenges, and insights from academy life.

How It Works

The Conversation Circle™ breaks the life of a young athlete into 24 topics, organised into five key areas:

• My Game

• My Outlook

• My People

• My Future

• My Time

To use the tool, simply guide each athlete through the topics and ask them to rate each of them on a scale from 1-10. They then colour in the corresponding section of the circle accordingly, which creates a clear visual snapshot of how the player is doing. Facilitating conversations with the young person encourages them to open up and discuss their life in a more structured way - getting around from just asking “How are you?” and receiving short replies. Repeating the activity four times per season allows you to track progress, identify trends, and quickly flag areas in red that may require extra support.

What You Get

When you purchase a Conversation Circle package for your squad(s), each athlete receives a fully customised player pack featuring their name, your club’s name, and their squad or age group. All packs for a squad are shipped together in one clearly labelled box, making storage, organisation, and distribution hassle-free.

Each player pack lasts for a season and includes:

• 4 Conversation Circles with space for the young person to note down their thoughts;

• A SWOT Analysis table;

• A tracker to easily note down results and monitor trends;

• A folder for each player to keep their work safe and confidential.

In addition to the player packs, you will receive several copies of our in-depth user guide, which includes explanations and guiding questions for each topic, as well as signposting examples to look out for when using the tool.

You will also get access to the official Conversation Circle app, which lets you easily upload all players’ scores to maintain an electronic record of the data, thereby providing clubs with a wider snapshot of how players across different age groups and squads are doing. The app will also facilitate the tracking of individual players’ progress across seasons, and make it easy to filter the data by topic to see how everyone at the club is doing in one specific area.

Before receiving your player packs, you will complete a live, online training delivered by Football Beyond Borders, a leading UK-based youth engagement charity, who we’ve partnered with to develop and deliver a high-level training. Their approach is underpinned by strong impact evidence and a sector-leading Practitioner Training Programme, including accredited Level 4 and Level 5 qualifications, designed to equip adults with the skills to support young people through relational and trauma-informed practices.

Their expert tutors will lead you through the tool while providing critical lessons on how to create safe spaces for young athletes and ensure that sessions are young person-led. Through the training, FBB will support coaches and academy staff with practical tools, shared language, and relational frameworks that strengthen trust, accountability, and belonging.

The Conversation Circle was built to support young athletes during some of the most formative years of their lives.

It helps them articulate who they are as people and as competitors, and encourages them to explore their dreams, passions, challenges, and long-term ambitions. At the same time, it gives Player Care professionals, coaches, and trusted adults a dependable, research-informed framework to guide structured, meaningful discussions. Instead of relying on ad-hoc questions or intuition - which can feel awkward or intrusive for both the adult and the teenager - the Conversation Circle provides a clear, safe pathway into deeper topics.

Connecting with young people, especially teenagers, can be challenging. Many adults struggle with knowing how to ask personal questions without feeling like they are overstepping. Young athletes, in turn, may hesitate to open up due to worry, embarrassment, or simply not knowing where to begin.

The Conversation Circle removes those barriers.

• It provides structure, so conversations never feel forced or awkward.

• It breaks the ice in a natural, age-appropriate way.

• It helps adults build trust, showing athletes that someone is genuinely interested in their wellbeing.

• It empowers young people to share thoughts and feelings they often keep to themselves.

In our experience, this greatly helps young athletes view their Player Care staff or coaches not only as authority figures, but as supportive adults they can turn to when they need help or guidance. Such trust is invaluable, both on and off the pitch, particularly at a time where young athletes are under more pressure than ever - academic competition, social expectations, family demands, and the intense performance culture within sport. Within this context, being seen and heard can make a profound difference.

The Conversation Circle helps ensure that every athlete has dedicated time and space to reflect, talk openly, and feel supported by the adults around them, which can significantly strengthen resilience, confidence, and mental wellbeing.

For Academy Managers and Club Directors overseeing multiple squads and age groups, the Conversation Circle provides a unified snapshot of how athletes are doing across key areas of their lives, through our tracker app. This enables:

• Early identification of issues before they escalate.

• Clear visibility of trends across teams and/or age brackets.

• Data-driven decisions to strengthen club culture and performance.

• More inclusive, supportive environments that promote long-term athlete player support.

Such insights will help your club or organisation’s leadership to not only react to challenges, but proactively build systems that support athlete development holistically.

In 2025, TPCG acquired the rights to the Wellbeing Wheel and began an intensive, collaborative effort with Natalie to refine and expand the tool for wider use across academies and clubs. Every element - the design, content, structure, and supporting documents - was thoroughly peer-reviewed and tested to create a tool that is intuitive, interactive, and genuinely engaging for young athletes and the adults who support them.

As we transformed the tool, it became clear that its power really lied in the conversations it sparks. We chose to rename it the Conversation Circle because it aligns with the tool’s true purpose: to encourage meaningful, open, and structured dialogue between a trusted adult and a young athlete. While the circle can - and often does - positively impact athlete wellbeing, its primary aim is to help young people reflect on important aspects of their lives that they may not have considered before. This deeper understanding often leads to happier young people off the pitch and improved performance on it, but these are natural by-products of using the Conversation Circle.

The resulting Conversation Circle™ brings together best practices from pastoral care, teaching, and professional sport.

It equips Player Care practitioners and trusted adults with a simple, visual, offline way to encourage meaningful dialogue, build trust, and support players holistically; helping them thrive off the pitch so they can perform at their best on it. This tool is designed for young people playing competitive sport between the ages of 14-19 to be used with a trusted adult within the team or club – whether a Player Care professional, coach, parent volunteer, or mentor.

Kindly note that, at this time, the Conversation Circle is available for purchase exclusively by professional academies within the UK and EU. The tool will be officially launched for professional academies outside the UK and EU, as well as for non-professional academies, soon. In the meantime, please register your interest by completing the form below, or by contacting us via email at conversationcircle@playercaregroup.co.uk.

THE CONVERSATION CIRCLE™ PACKAGES

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