Winter Sports
During a visit to Ipswich Town’s Portman Road stadium to conduct an interview with their new Head Groundsman, Ben Connell, the subject turned to the club’s training ground. Ben felt that the club had been ‘left behind’ following their relegation from the Premier League in 2002, and was keen to put in place a development plan to bring the training facilities up to speed again
aving come from a non- footballing background - Ben Connell was previously Head Groundsman at St Joseph’s College - our editor, Laurence Gale, suggested that it might be a good idea for him to visit the training grounds of a few other clubs to get a feel for what they were providing. And, so, in late November, he accompanied Ben to two Championship sides - Wolves and Derby - and the Premier League’s Stoke City and Manchester City, the latter of whom have impressive plans in place to provide a new, state-of-the-art complex alongside the Etihad stadium.
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Many of the top flight clubs have invested heavily in their training facilities in recent years, amongst them Stoke City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United.
Apart from the obvious benefits to first team performance and nurturing young
talent through their respective academies, another of the driving forces has been the launch of the Football Association’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which was set up in 2011. The EPPP is a youth development scheme initiated by The Premier League. Its intention is to free up movement of younger players by establishing a hierarchy of association football academies in England and fixing the transfer fees between academies. The Premier League published the following list of principles upon which the EPPP was designed after its ratification by the members of the Football League:
- Increase the number and quality of home grown players gaining professional contracts in the clubs and playing first-team football at the highest level
- Improve coaching provision
Ipswich Town Training
Grounds for improvement
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