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A massive foundation stone has just been laid on the Central Coast with a school of football excellence established for kids from years 5 to 10.
Some years ago, I needed to make a choice between which one of the new Sydney FC and Central Coast Mariners teams I would support.
I lived in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney. Gosford was about 50 minutes by car, plus say ten minutes to park and walk, so about an hour.
Sydney FC, with a 10 minute walk to the train, 20 minutes on the train, 20 minutes to the stadium, was around an hour also.
I choose the Mariners for two reasons. The parents of both my wife and I lived on the coast, and we had a weekender we rented that we planned to move into one day. The other reason was a speech by Lyle Gorman.
The Mariners arrived on the Coast and where mostly main up of Northern Spirit coaches, and key players and the Spirit was my NSL team after my Blacktown Demons went back to state level.
The Mariners arrived on the Coast about the same time as the Northern Eagles left and in a rugby league area were initially seen as a club taking advantage of another sports’ misfortunes.
I went along with maybe 150 others to listen to what Lyle Gorman had to say.
Essentially why should we support a team in a rugby league heartland with little money? How would we play? How would we compete with capital city teams?
How would we get a crowd from a regional centre of around 250, 000 who followed rugby league?
Lyle said he planned to build Australia’s biggest and best training academy, a Centre of Football Excellence.
This academy would get the best juniors around the country and by developing them they would help the team play good football, more importantly good football of a high technical quality would in time get crowds, and in time produce players we could sell overseas to help fund the club.
We all asked Lyle how, who, why, when will the funding be available. Lyle answered I will make it happen or the club will fail.
Sydney FC had Frank, Dwight, and heaps of money. They were talking up the bling.
The Mariners had a dream we all though it had little chance of success. I reasoned the Mariners need help, I will live on the Coast one day, but most of all I love his dream of building a technical centre of football excellence and a football academy to support it.
The announcement of the opening of the football school of excellence on the Coast is music to my ears. To fully understand it, you need to be aware of the Mariners’ academy structure and how the school will fit in.
Coaches employed by the Mariners and working through the COE, coach and design the coaching methods of the Central Coast Association representative teams of all ages, both boys and girls.
Further Mariners appointed and paid coaches also design the coaching methods for the Western NSW Association [roughly 12, 000] rep teams.
In both Associations the Mariners also train the rep coaches. Both Associations have rep teams from U9 to U18, who are coached consistent with Mariners’ methods, and both participate at state level.
In addition every Mariners coaching session is open to any coach in both associations. Graham Arnold takes pride in passing on his knowledge to local coaches.
The new school has two former Mariners players as head male coaches. The COE and the school are working together and looking to see how this can be expanded.
Now it is reasonable to assume if the kids that go to this school are good they will make the Central Coast Association rep sides where Mariners’ scouts watch every game. We have former coaches in the school passing on information about players.
This means we have laid one of Lyle’s hopes for the COE, that it would have its own school where kids could develop in football and academia.
They will be coached and watched by former Mariners players in association with the COE and play in representative teams.
Any kid who wants a career in football will try to come to this school and try to make the rep teams
As a Mariners supporter, it makes me very proud. And it’s all been done on a shoe string budget.
The COE is under twelve months away from being cash positive.
This is possibly a first for Australian sport, and shows that sport can still have valuable and viable links with the community.
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