| Two of Scotland’s most active community football clubs have reached a unique arrangement to nurture Scotland’s footballers of the future. Stirling Albion and Falkirk have agreed to form Scottish football’s first community coaching ‘partnership’ to offer enhanced football provision in central Scotland in an effort to develop Scotland’s footballers of the future and to create coaching employment opportunities. The model, which is very successful on the continent where local clubs share resources and offer a wider community football proposition for mutual benefit, is the first stage of a long term collaboration plan by both clubs to identify, develop and retain the best local talent and to offer children in the Stirling and Falkirk areas a twin soccer centre/club approach. The Falkirk Football Community Foundation, which currently runs part of its ‘Mini Bairns’ (for 3-5 year olds) and ‘John Hughes Soccer School’ (for 5-8 year olds) out of Stirling University, will pass this part of their programme over to Stirling Albion. The programme will be rebranded as ‘Mini Binos’ and ‘Stirling Albion Soccer Centre’ and will build on Stirling Albion’s successful ‘Young Reds’ programme. Falkirk Football Community Foundation will continue to run its ‘Mini Bairns’ and ‘John Hughes Soccer School’ in the Falkirk area. Steven Leiper from Stirling Albion said: “Increasing Stirling Albion’s presence in the community was a key part of our Supporters’ Trust’s plans when we launched our campaign to buy the club. This is a fantastic gesture from Falkirk to help us achieve that aim and we look forward to working with them to provide the best children’s football programme in central Scotland. Children within the existing Falkirk community programme in Stirling will now have the chance to play for ‘Young Reds’ teams and enjoy other membership benefits including free match tickets at the ‘Doubletree Dunblane Stadium’, access to Scotland international tickets and discounted Stirling Albion merchandise. This agreement gives us an accelerated start by benefiting from the work already done by Falkirk in establishing their Stirling programme with close to one hundred children already in the programme being passed to us.” Tom Elliot – Head of Community Coaching at Falkirk FC, said: “Whilst the ‘Mini Bairns’ and ‘John Hughes Soccer School’ are already established in the Stirling area, we recognise that Stirling Albion should be the prominent and first choice community club. We will work closely with Stirling Albion to further develop their community football programme and, by handing over the Stirling based part of our ‘Mini Bairns’ and ‘John Hughes Soccer School’, Stirling Albion can now create an enhanced, continuous pathway through their existing ‘Young Reds’ programme.” John O’Neill, manager of Stirling Albion, said: “To have a successful club we need to have a continuous flow of local talent coming through to first team level. Of course it will be some time before our ‘Mini Binos’ are ready for first team action but they are the vital first rung on our player development programme.” Managing director of Falkirk FC, George Craig said: “We are very excited about this partnership between Stirling Albion and our new Community Foundation. Over the years thanks to Tom Elliot and his dedicated staff we have developed an award winning Community model of player participation and a development pathway for all ages and abilities. When the changes took place at Stirling we were keen to become involved and offered to share our best practice with the new people involved in the running of the club. Our Stirling involvement was always going to be confined to our training base at the University. This wider partnership will allow the foundation to come into contact with children throughout the Stirling District. Young Coaches employed through the SPL Futures Job Fund and Falkirk FC will be actively involved in the partnership to gain valuable work experience and the potential of longer term employment” All existing children will continue to be offered places in the newly rebranded programmes and there will be no change to coaches, pricing, location and times. Rebranding will take place by the end of 2010 starting with the ‘Mini Binos’ and ‘Stirling Albion Soccer Centre’ and administration will continue to be carried out by Falkirk FC until August 2011. |
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