The Academy

The Academy was born as long ago as 1st July 1998, following Howard Wilkinson's revolutionary 'Charter for Football'. The Charter set out strict criteria which had to be fulfilled should clubs wish to be awarded their Academy Licence. As the Academy geared itself up for the new season 2005/06, John Landamore took the opportunity to catch up with Academy Manager Ricky Martin as he boarded the team bus for the trip to Derby for the opening game of the campaign.

Ricky Martin

Ricky you have now been in charge at The Academy for a complete season, looking back how do you feel it all went last season? I was of course assistant Academy Manager before I took over the roll of Manager. I have found the roll has a huge responsibility and the wider spectrum of The Academy surprised me at first. Taking on all that extra responsibility I found really interesting and at the same time very challenging plus of course very exciting. The roll is very diverse as you have not only to deal with players but also with parents, and I also get involved with the sales and marketing and sponsorship, and that includes dealing with people such as yourself. As we move into the new season what are your expectations and how do you see The Academy moving forward? Last year I took the time to look at the wider spectrum of The Academy. I made a few changes at the start of the season and then brought in a few more ideas as the season progressed. David Williams and myself needed time to look at how things had worked in the past and we looked at how we wanted to change it around. We have done that now and I am hoping that this season we can now kick on and add to the foundations that we put in place last season.

Danny Laws

Earlier this week Danny Laws joined The Academy as the new Education Officer following on from the excellent work done by Ken Ady. Many fans will not be familiar with the education side of The Academy, what can you tell us? Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Ken for all the hard work that he put in right from the start of The Academy. This is a vital part of The Academy and I see Danny as major part of the set up at Colney.

He will be responsible for implementing the college programme for the scholars and also being an assistant to me in insuring the welfare, polices and general practices and procedures of The Academy are in place. Everyone knows the guidelines and the welfare of all the players is always our main concern.

On the question of education it was excellent news to hear of the results Josh Clarke achieved in his A level exams. It was tremendous for Josh and it is a testament to his determination and it shows just how hard he has been working. Josh left school with very impressive GCSE's and he has now carried that on to get top marks in his A levels. What we are all now hoping for is that he can now get back out onto the field and show all Canary fans that he is just as clever on the field as he is off it.

Josh Clarke

One last question, and that is how important do you feel it is the roll that the likes of FONCY, NCISA and The Ambassadors play in The Academy? The three organisations play a vital roll. We have a foundation which I like to refer to as a cake and the three groups are the icing on the cake with probably FONCY also being the cherry on the top.
U14 Belgium Report	What the three groups have done in the past and I sincerely hope will continue to do in the future is supply us with those little luxuries they we all like to have, for instance last weekend the Under-14's were in Belgium thanks to FONCY. The lads travelled to Brussels, a City I have never been to and I don't believe any of the players had. It was a great opportunity for them to play against continental sides, and these opportunities would not be available unless we had the support of people such as yourself.
It was nice to be able to extend an invitation to many of the business people who support FONCY to come and see the Under-14's play against Bayer Leverkusen and Ajax at Colney last week. It was my way of saying thank you to them. Thanks to Ricky for taking the time to talk to us, we hope to get a few more words with Ricky later in the season.