Jack Sharkey

Jack Sharkey is an applied sport scientist and high-performance leader with senior experience across club and international football, specialising in physical preparation, monitoring systems, and return-to-play frameworks. He is currently Physical Performance Lead at Football Australia (September 2025–present), supporting performance delivery at federation level, and is also the Founder and Director of Montari Ltd (July 2025–present), providing high-performance consultancy and strategic support to professional clubs and national federations. Through Montari, his work centres on designing and implementing performance departments, building long-term athlete development systems, and improving integrated workflows between coaching, performance, medical, and data teams, ensuring that monitoring and preparation models match the realities of the competitive environment.

Prior to these roles, Sharkey served as Director of Performance and Innovation at Olympique Lyonnais Groupe(September 2023–September 2025), leading performance strategy and innovation within an elite European club structure. Before moving to Lyon, he was Head of Sports Science for Football Australia’s Women’s National Teams (January 2022–September 2023), contributing to the planning, monitoring, and preparation demands of international football. He previously spent over four years as Head of Sports Science at Aston Villa FC (July 2017–December 2021), operating within a high-performance club environment where training load monitoring, integrated support practice, and robust return-to-play processes are essential to sustaining player availability across a long season. His earlier practical background also includes work with Burton Albion FC and Queens Park Rangers FC, supporting his broad understanding of how performance models must adapt across different club contexts.

Academically, Sharkey holds an MSc in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University (2011–2012), where he was a Graduate Scholarship Recipient and completed a dissertation examining the effects of acute low-oxygen exposure on muscle cell behaviour in vitro under the supervision of Professor Mark Lewis. He also earned a BSc (1st Class Honours) in Sport Science (Outdoor Activities) from Bangor University (2007–2010), with undergraduate research focused on echocardiographic assessment of cardiac properties in experienced fell runners supervised by Dr Hans-Peter Kubis. This scientific grounding supports his applied focus on evidence-led physical preparation, load monitoring, and system design in elite football environments.

Academic Institution: Loughborough University. Practical Affiliation (current & previous): Football Australia; Olympique Lyonnais; Aston Villa FC; Burton Albion FC; Queens Park Rangers FC. Languages Spoken: English. Content Feature: Training Load Monitoring. Area: Applied Sport Science.