Wolves head coach Rob Edwards gave a press conference with a difference this week, after fielding questions from a dozen pupils with autism from Tettenhall Wood School.
As part of One Pack Week, which sees Wolves celebrate the equality, diversity and inclusion of the club and its local community, the pupils were invited for a special afternoon at Compton Park and given a surprise by Edwards.
Arranged by Wolves supporter and broadcaster Robbie Meakin, who is also a staff member at Tettenhall Wood – an all-through specialist school for children with autism – the pupils arrived at the training ground thinking they were going to hold a Q&A with a member of club staff, so were thrilled when discovering they would instead be grilling the head coach.
Posing questions about football, such as who is better out of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, whether he thinks Arsenal or Manchester City will win the Premier League, and what made him want to become a coach, as well as more personal questions about his favourite food, colour and film as well as being asked to show off his best dance moves, the children were able to put their journalistic skills to the test with an engaging Edwards.
Explaining how the session came about, Meakin said: “We had ‘Careers Week’ at the start of March and there’s quite a few of pupils who are quite interested in media, so with the connections I have to the club I got in touch and asked if it would be possible to hire out the media room at Compton or Molineux and get some of the kids to ask questions to the staff in a Q&A style.
“So then when Rob Edwards came in, you could just see the look on their faces, because that was a fantastic surprise. Credit to Rob for getting involved and giving his time up for some of the hard-hitting questions like, ‘Who is your favourite Powerpuff Girl?
