Academy Birthday

Posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Today we celebrate exactly a year since the Academy opened its doors. It has been a fantastic year and one every member of the Spartans family should be really proud of.

It’s been a remarkable year. It’s very difficult to know where to start…right from the moment at 6.30pm a year ago when Doug Cowie said he had a lump in his throat as he walked up Pilton Drive and saw the floodlights, then saw for the first time the sheer scale and size of what we had built.

Our work in the Community has probably given us greatest satisfaction but let’s start with the elite end of what we have done.

Big Occasions , some examples

– the big game last week against Forfar – our first Scottish Cup game in front of a crowd of 745, pity about the score but to see so many Spartans youngsters was fantastic
– our pre-season tourney with SPL team Hamilton Accies, SFL team Raith Rovers, Conference North team Blyth Spartans – and of course we won, the Ronnie Swan Challenge Cup. Ronnie is the most famous Spartan of all time
– the Mark Burns testimonial against Falkirk… a great day and even a Burnsy goal

– hosting Scotland vs Denmark in a Womens Full International Under 19 game…with national anthems plus the national flags flying..and a crowd of 685 , the best ever home crowd for a Womens U19 international
– hosting a number of national squads for training…the Scotland Womens/Under 19 and Under 17 football teams, the Scotland and Argentina full rugby teams plus the Under 21 and under 19 squads . Anna Siguel the Scotland Womens team manager loves bringing her team to the Academy and the way we are promoting Womens football. Debbi is playing a big role and has also had the delights of starting at 7.45am three mornings a week with the Scotland Youth players who are based in Edinburgh
– our Womens team taking on Celtic in a SWPL game on the FieldTurf in front of 200 fans, the biggest ever crowd for a league game in the SWPL, and the depair when Celtic equalised in the last minute…but not for Alex King who came in his Celtic tracksuit top and a Spartans beanie hat!

The big occasions are special days but it is also special every week when the 650 Spartans players and 100 coaches turn up for coaching…on a Saturday morning over 200 youngsters get their chance on the FieldTurf and it was this spectacle which Gordon Strachan raved about when he visited for a day back in August.

Our Community work , some examples

We have delivered so much more than we planned and we are continually told about the real difference we are making in North Edinburgh. Our work has included:

– Nursery Nutmegs and Little Dribblers…introducing football to 2 to 4 year olds in local schools as well as at the Academy

– HalfWay House and the Jet Placement programmes – a course for children who won’t really go to school but will come to the Academy to work on our laptops, help with odd jobs and develop as people. The change in the confidence levels of those who have taken part in the programme has been quite remarkable
– Kickstart – highly structured programmes for local unemployed youngsters combining classroom support in our learning centre to find jobs with playing football

– Hidden Treasures – Kenny is quite rightly very proud of this photography course for local youngsters and their work will be showcased in Art Galleries in Edinburgh in the New Year
– the Special Visit programme – some of the “Young Team” had never been outside Edinburgh until 2009…they have now been to loads of places…Airdrie, Fraserburgh, Ratho for climbing, Hampden with David Etale to watch Scotland and even to Prestonpans!
– Read and White Army – another course for local youngsters, this time to write a book about Spartans and football which we can use to help with the reading skills in our local primary schools in the New Year
– Academy Special K…a kintergarden for Mums and Toddlers encouraging exercise and teamwork
– Active Futures – for local 17 – 25 year olds every Sunday night at the Academy where the boys from all our local communities play and mix together. The Police see this as their most important programme to break down the barriers between all the individual areas in North Edinburgh…coming together from Drylaw, Wardieburn, Granton, Pilton, Muirhouse etc on a Sunday night creates friendships and respect
– “Play like Gerrard” and our other school holiday programmes…which have consistently out-sold Hearts and Hibs due our great facilities and the outstanding coaching provided by Kenny, Debbie and Dan

We talked about providing a “Social Home” when we opened…I think for Naomi, Brandon and Liam we have almost become their real home…they have hardly missed a day.

Awards
After winning the SFA Community Club of the Year just after we opened the accolades keep coming for all our work. This week for example we were presented with an award from SURF (Scottish Urban Regeneration Fund), the first sporting project to receive recognition for a role in Urban Regeneration. Last month Douglas provided the key-note speech at the Scottish Social Enterprise Forum annual gathering with the Chief Executive of the Big Issue singing our praises. He followed up with a presentation to Winning Scotland the body responsible for developing elite sport in Scotland – Judy Murray, Bill Gammell and Frank Dick all revelling at the work we were doing and the facilities we had.

Our funders are delighted with the impact we are having – Children in Need have just extended their support from 1 year to 4 years. To maintain the funding we have to demonstrate the impact we are having and our work is audited. The Scottish Investment Fund is our biggest funder. Before they committed anything they followed our team around the Academy and North Edinburgh monitoring all that we did. They were measuring the financial impact of everything, for example, the improvements to health, the employment we created and our impact of our education programmes. They concluded by saying we were delivering over £7 in return for every £1 invested…one of the highest returns of any equivalent body in Scotland.

Our “Street Football in a Safe Place” initiative providing free football for over 300 youngsters every week is being heralded all over Scotland and has had the biggest impact of anything we have done. The Police continue to report that nuisance calls are down by over 50% since we opened and knife crime is also well down (40% in our first 6 months) in North Edinburgh.

Our Team

We now have 7 full time/near full time staff led by Douglas. Debbie, Kenny, Colin, Paul, Dan and Di have done a great job in every aspect of what we have done. We now have funding for a Youth worker who will start in January to further develop our Community programmes. Paul turned up to do some volunteering for a couple of shifts when we opened…and now he’s a full time employee and a critical part of the match day line up on a Saturday.

The team have worked in an environment where we still have a number of problems with the site, in particular Colin has worked tirelessly to deliver outstanding customer service in the face of the many obstacles which pop up when least expected.

Our volunteer programme has also been a big success. We have over 100 coaches and administrators across the club who work hard. In addition to this we have added to this a group of over 15 regular volunteers who help Douglas and the team in the cafe/bar and in facilities management roles. We need this level of support to keep us going. The help provided by the Spartans players and coaches has been a great success. You cannot underestimate what a role model does to improve behaviour, attitude and positivity…a couple of weeks ago Gavin was refereeing a birthday party match for 9 year olds, when they were told he was a first team player suddenly he got more respect than all the SPL refs have got combined this season

We would love to increase further our volunteer pool, do let us know if you want to help.

The Future

The Academy cost nearly £4m to build, it’s a good job no-one told us that at the start or we may never have started. We still have a debt of almost £500,000 but have ring-fenced funding to develop the South West corner of the site, perhaps even to put a roof over it to make it much more usable in the Winter. We have planning for a covered terrace on the West side of the ground, to open up our “Away” entrance from Pilton Avenue and to put in more turnstiles. We will also purchase one of the portable multi-sport pitches to help Kenny and Debbi with their outreach work in the Community. Our day to day financials are on track, and Dan has the cafe income beating targets on a weekly basis. We do need our volunteer effort to stay ahead of the game and ensure we can continue to meet our debt commitments.

It has been a great first year, thanks for being with us on the journey. We might have done some things better but we’re certainly working as hard as we can to improve. We can do much more and are looking forward to your continued support, input and ideas.