Ira Jackson Jr’s decision to quit playing football last year came as a shock to many but he’s enjoying life on the other side.

The 28-year-old recently joined the coaching team at Isthmian South East side Sheppey United where he’s been tasked with taking the first-team sessions during the week, assisting the experienced management team of Ernie Batten and Geoff Record.

It was last January when he opted to quit Folkestone Invicta, a club where he’d scored 54 goals in 130 appearances. He’d been talented enough to enjoy a brief spell in the Football League at Grimsby Town.

Speaking after a handful of training sessions at Sheppey, Jackson said: “It’s going well and we’re already starting to see some of the things we’ve been working on in training in games but there is still a lot of work to do.

“To be able to do the sessions and present to Geoff and Ernie and the staff, that has been a joy for me to show my scope and range as a coach, in terms of how to develop players as individuals. We’ve seen slight fingerprints of what I’ve been doing so far in recent games after sessions.

“It’s a work in progress. To see some of the stuff implemented is good and hopefully with the next 10 games we start to turn the screw a bit, put it all together and get the wins.”

Sheppey have lost their last five league games and are back in action at home to Herne Bay this Saturday.

Jackson started his own coaching company, Pro Calibre, a few years ago for one-to-one player development.

Individual coaching was important for him, trying to help players with coaching and support.

He said: “I enjoyed the coaching so much that it helped me with the decision I made about retiring (from playing).”

The offers came flooding in after his Folkestone exit, for playing, coaching and becoming a player-manager. Jackson’s keen to manage a team in his own right but wants to learn a thing or two first.

“In terms of performance (at Folkestone) I wasn’t anywhere near retirement,” he said.

“In terms of my own personal goals and desire, I didn’t have anything more to give on the pitch and in my eyes, you shouldn’t take money from a club if you’re not 100 per cent.

“The chairman and manager were shocked and asked me to stay and see the season out but I would have been doing the fans a disservice. I didn’t want to be playing football.

“There were young kids who were not going to play in a team I was in because of my pedigree. They want to play, are willing to work hard and learn, they are the types of players you should build off, not players on their way down trying to rediscover whether they want to play football or not.

“I didn’t want to just keep on playing because I was getting paid. I was adamant I wouldn’t play again and said to put something in my exit contract that I wouldn’t play for anyone else that season.

“I had loads of offers as soon as I left but I am a man of my word and when this season started I had loads more offers, including Sheppey United.”

Jackson took a role as manager of the under-23s at Corinthian, an ideal starting point for a coach who is keen to develop young players.

Sheppey United have the same ideals which made the switch to Holm Park an attractive proposition.

He said: “I want to manage and that’s why I went into the role of the 23s. No non-league club is going to offer me the chance to manage the first team, something I hadn’t done before, unless I went as a player-manager. I don’t want to play.

“I went to Corinthian to develop myself and to understand my strengths and weaknesses as a manager and to learn how to put a philosophy into place and how to get the best out of players, along with helping players to learn as individuals.

“Corinthian gave me the opportunity to put my three key principles into play, which is player development, player progression and team performance.

“We didn’t win every game but we didn’t have the same team every game and we weren’t able to fully build on things. That’s where it was a welcome invitation when Sheppey said would you like to be a coach.

“This gives me the opportunity to work with a group of players and to help them to be better, use my experience as player, manager and coach, to try and get the best out of the group of players who have potential but are not quite filling it consistently.

“My big issue is that there are not many clubs who trust young players. I think the young players with coaching are good enough to play. You never get experience if you never play.

“I want to be the type of manager who will give a young player the opportunity to play, to let them make mistakes and to evolve and to coach them.”

Jackson had already seen what Sheppey were about when his Corinthian side played the Ites’ under-23s in a pre-season friendly. He remembers the game well.

He said: “It was the best game I have had the privilege of being in as a manager, even though we got smashed. I learned so much.

“To watch Sheppey and see the way that they played and how the manager was encouraging young players, 16 years old, to play and enjoy it, that spoke to me in terms of my values and principles. That is the sort of thing you want from a club.

“Since I have been at Sheppey one of the big things I have wanted is to have the 23s in every Thursday, as many as we could get. It gives me an opportunity to have a look at them and it also gives them the experience of training with the first team, which is a big step at that age.

“Because of the ethos of the club and my own personal ethos, in giving young players an opportunity, is mixes really well.

“I’m not the manager but I can give advice and recommendations, also it is good to see how they do it, what I can learn. It has been a good experience so far and it will be good to learn from Ernie what it’s like to be a manager at this level. You can learn from everyone, no matter what level it’s at.”