For the Leyton Orient match I wrote about something that was being built on the O’s doorstep, that being the Olympic Stadium, whereas this time around the link is a little more tenuous as we have to go about 25 miles north-east of Walsall to find the new FA National Football Centre (NFC) which is currently being built on a 330-acre site just to the west of Burton-on-Trent, that has been renamed St. George’s Park. The site, on the Byrkley Park Estate having been purchased by the FA for £2million way back in February 2001.
That meaning that with the project now looking likely to be finished in the summer of this year, instead of the initial mooted opening date of 2002, we’ll have gone a massive eleven and a half years from land purchase to site completion. Early on in the piece though the site was landscaped and pitches were installed but the project stalled numerous times for various reasons. First up being Chief executive Adam Crozier and technical director Howard Wilkinson leaving the FA in October 2002 as doubts began to emerge as to how things would move on.
In January 2003 though the FA board issued a new completion date of May 2004, but then we reached the September of that year and with big financial concerns surrounding Wembley along with an air of scandal around Soho Square with Mark Palios and Sven-Goran Eriksson making tabloid headlines all work was halted on the project. Further decisions being made, in April 2005 and then again in September 2006 to postpone a decision on the NFC, with the FA board reportedly two months later voting to scrap the project only to reconsider and vote for yet another decision postponement.
In 2008 however the FA Board reignited the project and appointed a new NFC Board, led by chairman David Sheepshanks. The board since then embarking on what they describe as an ‘extensive consultation and research programme’, with work finally starting again in earnest in January 2011 alongside commercial partners Umbro and Hilton Worldwide, who will be running two hotels comprising of 226 bedrooms on the site. So, as far as we are concerned the question is what are we getting for what is reputedly going to cost around £100million? Well, here goes, breathe in, a:
120m x 80m indoor hall, accommodating a full-size 105m x 68m artificial football pitch and 60m indoor running track; 60m x 40m multisport indoor sports hall with sprung floor with capacity for Futsal, badminton and netball, plus football pitches for the partially-sighted; Eleven external pitches, including floodlighting and undersoil heating. The pitches will accommodate full-size and seven-a-side elite football and coaching for all age groups; Goalkeeping areas; Seminar rooms; Bespoke head tennis courts, sand pits, sand rehabilitation lanes, sweat boxes and bleep test zones; Hydrotherapy suite; Strength and conditioning gyms; Biomechanics and screening area; Individual consulting rooms; Perimeter trim trail.
The project will also house a 25,000 square foot elite sports medicine, treatment and performance research centre, which will become the first FIFA Centre of Medical Excellence in England while there are currently only 22 such Centres in the world at present. Head of Medical Services at the FA Ian Beasley commenting on the planned Centre: “St.George’s Park is a dream come true to those working in football medicine and science in this country. Gaining FIFA Centre of Excellence status will be a real fillip to our industry.”
It’s not only on field stuff that will be catered for though as last week the University of Liverpool became the first higher education institute to partner with The FA and its educational arm, FA Learning, at the NFC, the University’s Management School working with FA Learning to develop certain courses aimed at the business and administration of football and its related disciplines. So, with Burton and South Derbyshire College already on board as a further education partner learning about the game in its entirety also seems to be a big part of the NFC vision.
You have to say that it all sounds fantastic on paper and England Senior Men’s boss Fabio Capello, whose team will be one of 24 England sides based at the training home agrees as just before Christmas he said about the NFC: “I think it will be the best training centre in Europe. The facilities are incredible. It has surprised me – the buildings, the pitches, the hotels, they are incredible. It is a really fantastic place.” The only problem with it all of course is that it lessens our excuses for World Cup failure, so we’ll have to win it now.