Titus Bramble wanders away from a crisp, technicolour, sensory overload of a football scene unfolding at Ipswich Town’s training ground.
The group of 12-year-olds he coaches are warming down on one of the many pristine Playford Road playing surfaces.
They are fully kitted out in first-team shirts, shorts and socks, wearing an array of brightly coloured boots and sipping on sports drinks in the shadow of floodlight towers. There’s a smell of freshly-mown grass and the sound of serious instructions echoing across the vast arena.
It’s a world away from the setting the former Blues centre-back witnessed during his recent three weeks spent in Ghana last month, coaching as part of a sports project called ‘Future Stars’.
''Some of the things I saw... I was an emotional wreck really,'' says the 35-year-old, settling down to chat about his African experience.
''I knew it would be hard to see, but to witness it first hand was still a shock.
''Surely there shouldn’t be parts of the world without fresh water, still? A lot of the kids have no shoes and no socks, but they never moaned, they just get on with it.
''I went to a school and in the playground they were just singing and dancing because they have to make their own entertainment. It was amazing because they were the happiest kids I’ve ever seen.''
Bramble gestures towards the young Ipswich academy players making their way past the cones and towards the changing room.
''Just look around here, these kids have got everything,'' says the man who came through the very same system himself back in the early 90s before playing during the booming Premier League years for Ipswich, Newcastle, Wigan and Sunderland.
''You can’t knock them for it, because that’s all they know, but you see kids now who have an iPhone six, but because their friend has an iPhone seven they aren’t happy. I guess that’s the western world we live in.''
‘Future Stars’ was set up by Gary Miller, the managing director of oil and gas shipping company OMA Group which operates in the western coastal African nations of Ghana, Togo, Ivory Coast, Benin and Senegal. Miller felt he wanted to give something back to the continent in which his business is thriving through the form of a school regeneration project. And, as a lifelong Ipswich Town fan, he contacted his beloved Blues to see if they would help.
OMA Group sponsors the Ipswich Town academy and, in exchange, the club sends representatives to Ghana each year to help with football coaching. Ex-Town midfielder Simon Milton, now the club’s academy sponsorship manager, has travelled out to Ghana on several occasions and this year he persuaded Bramble to join him.
Five schools in the city of Tema, which is about half an hour away from the capital of Accra, are having a full renovation thanks to the funding from another large shipping company called Yinson, while OMA Group is overseeing the sports coaching.
Bramble provided open football sessions from six to eight in the morning each day for children aged between 10 to 14. The ones who were identified as having the most talent then got invited to train again under Bramble’s tutelage at a development centre on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
“I played with a few Ghanaian players in my career – Asamoah Gyan, Sulley Muntari, John Mensah, all for Sunderland, and Richard Kingson at Wigan – they are naturally quick, naturally strong and they’ve got raw ability. I saw that in the kids I coached,” said Bramble.
“A few of them have got a chance to develop into players. I saw maybe six, seven or eight players that definitely had something better than the rest.
“I’d like to go back over there because we need to make sure those players are still developing and improving.
“Ideally we’d like to see some of these players end up at the club here. If we can find a gem in Ghana it would be great to get them at Ipswich Town before anyone else.''
“They are Gods over there. Footballers used to be Gods here, but I think that’s changing now. Maybe it’s because we aren’t doing that well, but people seem to be losing interest.
''Every kid over there wants to be a footballer. You see them kicking bottles around barefoot, anything they can kick really.”
Has the trip changed Bramble in any way, made him more thankful for what he’s got?
''I’m not sure,” he says after a moment of consideration. ''I think I’ve always been grateful. I’ve always known the job I do is a dream come true. I never once took for granted that every time I put on a football shirt and ran on the pitch that I was living the dream.
“I know that sounds cheesy, but that’s how it was. Ipswich especially because that was my hometown club. Every Saturday was like a dream come true.
''I never took that for granted because I know there are millions of kids who’d love to do that.
''I guess it does put some things into perspective though.''