All right: I have no idea how to kick a ball, and the offside rule is, for me, one of life’s mysteries. But I’m an active woman with a football-mad nine-year-old son.

Can I make the leap to become his football coach? Of course I can. At least, that’s what the footie star Ian Rush would like me to think.

“Great, Rosie!” he shouts, as I enthusiastically follow him around a row of cones one wet morning in Regent’s Park. “You’ve really improved! Using both feet, too!”

I attempt a penalty against the former Wales international, and give the ball a weedy clout with the front of my foot. It wobbles off in the wrong direction.

“Don’t give up the day job!” someone shouts from the touchline, as I hop about in some pain. “Control the ball!” yells Rush. “Make sure you always know where it is!”

Yes, well. Football is not my strong point. Yet apparently I would make a great amateur coach, which is why eight or so other mothers and I are trying out our football skills. We don’t exactly look the part: someone has actually turned up in a skirt, and only one of us is wearing football boots.

Still, we mustn’t despair. The FA has great hopes that it can encourage the mothers of the nation to learn the basics of the beautiful game.

“Mums bring a host of other skills to football,” says Rush. “Compassion. Energy. And you know your children.” Hence the campaign, Mums on the Ball, which has been launched by the UK’s football associations.

The reason for it? Along with a paucity of football grounds, there is a dearth of football coaches at grassroots level. Dads who once might have been willing to kick a ball around the local park with the kids on a Saturday morning are now a rarity. So the ladies have been encouraged to join up.

“I want you on board,” yells Eric Harrison, a 70-year-old coach who, in his prime, drilled David Beckham, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs. “Control the ball! Move away from it! Then pass!”

The woman in the football boots suddenly makes a scorching pass. Then she does a couple of tricks, bouncing the ball off her knee.

“Come on,” says Rushy (as I believe the Liverpool centre forward was once known), looking at me. So I attempt the same trick, but the ball ricochets wildly. “Bounce it on your thigh, not the knee.” He shows me how, achieving about 36 bounces in two seconds. Don’t give up, Rushy advises, not unkindly. Okay, what are his top coaching tips (apart from buying some proper boots)?

“Buy some cones, and encourage your son to dribble up them, and pass back. Just teach him basic movements. Zigzag around the ball, move with the ball, keep your eye on the ball – so when you have possession, you know what’s going to happen,” says Rushy, bouncing the ball on his shoulder.

“And use the outside of your foot when you run with the ball. You go quicker.” Harrison hands the bibs out.

They all sport a giant McDonald’s logo. Yes, the fast food emporium, believed by many to be partly responsible for child obesity, is committed to grassroots football in the UK – it has shelled out £21m on kit and equipment for coaching schemes over the past six years.

It’s also the prime mover behind Mums on the Ball. A touch incongruous, perhaps? “I’d challenge that all our food is unhealthy,” says the McDonald’s rep, a very thin woman with perfect skin.

“You wouldn’t eat a Big Mac every day, but then would you eat a salad every day? It’s all about balance.” I’d warrant she’s never eaten a Big Mac, but never mind. We start our little game. The woman with red boots manages to score with a header. Someone falls over in the mud.

At the touchline, I stop to chat with Janice St Fort, mum of the Premier League players Rio and Anton Ferdinand, and Lynn Walcott, mother of the England wonderboy Theo. Did they coach their offspring, I ask.

“We were out in the park playing football every day. Every week. For years,” says Janice. “I’d kick a ball around the garden with Theo,” puts in Lynn. A comfortable-looking woman with a long grey plait of hair, Lynn doesn’t appear to be all that nostalgic about her son’s early route to genius.

“We didn’t think of it as football; it was just playing. And you don’t need to know much about football in order to coach. Mothers know a lot about their children, so you’re halfway there.”

Did she see his astonishing recent hat-trick for England? “Well, I was at home on my own, watching the game, of course, but when he scored the second goal, the phone rang. It was one of my clients, feeling unwell, so I had to switch off immediately and pay attention.”

What does she do? “I’m a self-employed midwife,” she says.

“Now come on, ladies!” yells Harrison, prancing around in the mud. “You can’t be 25% ready to receive the ball. Your muscles need to be 75% ready. Move!” Get out there as much as you can, no matter how bad you are, seems to be the general idea.

Even though he coached Beckham, Harrison believes his most inspiring protégé was Beckham’s Manchester United and England teammate Gary Neville. “Neville played morning, noon and night; and then I would stay back with him, passing the ball back and forward through the cones until he wore me out.”

What a ghastly prospect, I think. Nevertheless, 200 mothers have so far qualified as level-one coaches after taking the free three-day course, which includes classes on theory as well as the structures necessary to coach up to 16 children. More than 300 mothers are now waiting to become coaches.

“So, how did I do, Eric?” I ask when we retire for a sandwich. “I’ve seen you perform today. You’d be fine, because you don’t have to be a really good footballer.”

Coach Millard. It feels good.

For further information about Mums on the Ball, or to register for a coaching course, visit www.mcdonalds.co.uk (Be active section)

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