The centre will house an indoor sports hall, tennis courts, sand pits, sand rehabilitation lanes, a hydrotherapy suite, strength and conditioning gyms and a biomechanics area
DAVID SHEEPSHANKS: CHAIR
to create a financially sus- tainable business brand to bring this long-stand- ing project to fruition. I’ve been the chief cru- sader, but backed up by a first-class team. Following consultation with the mar-
W
ketplace to build a financially sustainable business plan, there was common agree- ment that the clubs wanted to keep control of the players’ education within their training academies, but there was a definite need for a centre that could edu- cate everyone else involved with the game. The FA already has a successful train- ing business, FA Learning, which ran 73
hen appointed in 2008, my main role was
courses last year, mainly Level One to Level Five coach education courses, but a plethora of others as well. St George’s Park will build on that effective platform, by developing an educational hub for English football with courses in referee- ing, leadership training, football and sports administration and sports market- ing – among others. Our national game will benefit
enormously from this focus on coach education and leadership training – tak- ing management and coaching to a new level. If we want to match the best in the world – which we’re plainly not today – we need to start with better coaches. Better coaches mean better play-
ers, in the long run. This is a long-term project, concerned with team develop- ment, rather than player development. Gargantuan amounts have been invested in wages, stadia and club academies, but disproportionately little in education and teaching our teachers. So this project is about raising quality and quantity. Our consultation and research, which involved looking at other national centres
If we want to match the best in the world, we need to start with better coaches
and other sports, especially golf, showed there was a need for investing in educa- tion for the game, particularly coaching. We want homegrown coaches from
St George’s Park to be as sought after as graduates from Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. We want to see St George’s managers leading domestic and interna- tional teams, so we can stop our reliance on recruiting from overseas for the top positions. We also want to raise the pro- file of coaching as a profession, making sure coaches are properly remunerated and have career pathways. This will create a training infrastructure
for English teams. There’s no silver bullet for the ills of English football, but I be- lieve in building on strengths, investing in teachers and creating a CPD ethos.
ALAN FERGUSON: HEAD GROUNDSMAN T
The centre will house 11 full-size, external, floodlit, undersoil-heated pitches for coaching all age groups
Issue 2 2012 © cybertrek 2012
his will be one of the best facili- ties in the world
for maintenance and choice of pitches. With the range of surfaces we have at St George’s Park, we will be able to repli- cate any playing surface that the England team will ever have to play on. There are four Desso GrassMas-
ter pitches (100 per cent natural grass with synthetic grass fibres), including a replica Wembley pitch; four fibresand pitches, with a lesser reinforced system; five natural surfaces, which have no
reinforcement, and two state-of-the- art synthetic pitches. All of them give differences in pace, hardness and bounce of the ball. This is a great asset to the country be-
cause, apart from the top six or seven Premier League clubs, most clubs just have one pitch, so players don’t get the experience of trying different surfaces. We are 40 minutes from 14 major soc-
cer venues and have a superb hotel and medical support, so we are expecting to be constantly busy. We will be involved with any new standards which the FA passes regarding pitches, as well as test- ing equipment.
Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital 29
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