Academy moves closer after £25m pledge

Chief football writer

Wednesday 22 February 2012

The Scottish Government yesterday pledged up to £25m towards football as part of an initiative to build a National Performance Centre.

The plans were launched at Hampden yesterday

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Michael Grant

The complex will serve as a new headquarters for the Scotland national squad, which will train there before matches.

Cities and towns around the country have been invited to bid to bring the new facility to their area. The fact that it will be used by the full Scotland squad – as well as their female counterparts – would suggest that a central belt location would be preferred, although Shona Robison, the minister for sport, said all areas of the country would be welcome to submit bids. The aim is to have the facility open by 2016 and it will be predominantly a football complex and home of a National Football Academy, although it will also have sports science and medical uses not specific to football.

Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, will chair a steering group to establish the criterion for bids and set a timetable for completion. Henry McLeish had identified the need for a national academy in his independent review of Scottish football, and Regan welcomed the Government's backing."The commitment to a National Performance Centre is a hugely significant step forward not just for Scottish football but for Scottish sport and culture," he said. "It reinforces our relationship with the Scottish Government. The Scottish FA has shown its commitment to elite talent development by appointing our first performance director, Mark Wotte, and investing £15m over the next four years in the performance area. We are delighted that the Scottish Government share our vision."The money will come from the Young Scots Fund, a talent initiative aimed at helping young people realise their potential. Although £25m is the upper limit, the actual level of Government input will depend on partnership funding, perhaps from a local authority, university, or the private sector. Although the country has new regional football facilities at Toryglen in Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Ravenscraig in Motherwell, the new facility would have national status. "We're not going to rule out any area [which bids]," said Robison. "It will be an open bidding process and the bids will come in from wherever in Scotland. We wouldn't want to be ruling out any area at this stage. Hopefully the bids will come from various parts of Scotland and hopefully we will be seeing some innovative thinking as well, on how the sports science, sports medicine side of things might be delivered, potentially in partnership with local universities or so forth. We want some innovative thinking around that and we will see what comes in."It's hard to tell [how many bids we will receive]. A lot of local authorities, partners and potential bidders are waiting to see what the criteria will be. But I would hope there would be a good selection and I expect there probably will be. £25m on the table is a good investment and of course, although it's a national performance centre, there will be a community benefit for wherever it is located. We would expect that the bids will show how kids and the local community will be able to use the facility, albeit that the focus of it will be on elite performance."We have regional centres at Toryglen, Ravenscraig and Aberdeen. I think originally the aim was to have about six. The National Performance Centre could have a regional role as well and we might look for that as part of the bidding process. If you look at the pyramid structure of the grass roots, the regional centres, bringing that talent on to the pinnacle of the national team, I think that's the model we'd want. So one national centre would be enough with the regional facilities underpinning that are going to be quite important. There are other national performance centres already focussing on other sports. This will be part of that network."Regan's steering group also includes sportscotland chief executive Stewart Harris, Sheila Begbie, head of women's and girls' football at the SFA, Paul Bush OBE, chief operating officer of EventScotland, Alistair Gray, chair of British Swimming, and Douglas Potter, chair of high performance group hockey in Scotland. It will meet for the first time next month.

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Academy moves closer after £25m pledge

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