Life Stories... With Tony Faulkner

Tony has forged a career in sports performance and become one of the country’s leading experts on neuroscience and how it relates to sport. After four years as a player at Manchester City, having been forced to retire early from professional football due to injury, Tony trained as a Chartered Physiotherapist working at Manchester City and Blackburn. He became head of performance management at Blackburn, a role he then took up with City. Tony’s interest in the area of performance psychology took him into the field of neuroscience – how people’s brains respond in a high performance environment. Already used to great effect in people development, the power of neuroscience is a feature of the MSc in Sports Directorship course, which Tony co-founded, bringing the subject into the business arena too. Tony is a partner with Andrew McIntyre in Visionary Sport International (VSI). Tony is a member of the NeuroPractitioners Guild made up of a select group of practitioners in global business from neuroscience. He has worked across football, rugby and corporate business with coaches, managers and senior management teams.