St Georges Park

St Georges park field trip

On Friday 15^th March the university put on a trip to St Georges Park, the new world class facility for The FA. I was looking forward to going on this trip as I am a football player myself, and therefore enjoy seeing world class facilities which professional athletes use. Below is a list of the facilities at St Georges Park:

·         Indoor 3G pitch – 120m x 80m building, accommodating a full-size 105m x 68m artificial football pitch equipped with a 200 person viewing gallery.

·         Running track – located adjacent to the indoor 3G pitch, the 60m sprint track features a specialist power plate which can track the speed, gait and running characteristics of athletes.

·         Indoor hall – 60m x 40m with sprung floor and capacity for Futsal, hockey, plus football pitches for the partially-sighted.

·         Sports Medicine Centre – St. George’s Park has its own world-class sports and exercise medicine, human performance and research centre called Perform, part of Spire Healthcare Sports Facilities St. George’s Park has world-class sports facilities which will facilitate sporting excellence.

·         External pitches – 11 external pitches, five of which have floodlighting and undersoil heating. The pitches will accommodate full-size and seven-a-side elite football and coaching for all age groups.

·         Goalkeeping areas – dedicated practice and training area for goalkeepers

·         Training hill – 30m outdoor training and fitness hill positioned at a 20 degree angle for fitness and conditioning.

·         Sports Pavilions – four external pitch side pavilions are available for briefings, training analysis and debriefings. Some with changing and catering facilities.

When looking around the facilities, it is a real eye opener at what sport and football has become. One of the things that amazed me was the main football pitch used by the England national team which is an exact replica to the pitch inside Wembley Stadium. At the time the pitch was being mowed and the guide said within the hour the pitch at Wembley will also be mowed so the length of the grass is the same at all times. This made me think a lot about how much can be done to assist sporting performance from world class coaching, to the use of the best equipment to the mowing of grass to ensure the variables of training and competing are as similar as possible.

Below are some quotes made by former England Striker Alan Shearer about the facility:

“At the end of the day we all want a better England team that can go on and challenge and win World Cups and European Championships. I’m pretty sure that this place will help that, not only with improving the standards of the players but also with improving the standards of coaches. I’m pretty sure it won’t be immediately and it will take time but if people are patient then I’m sure we will be rewarded in the years to come.”

It is clear that within international football everybody wants to be like the Spanish due to their outstanding ability and ways of playing football. For England to get to that standard the building and introduction of St Georges park is a start to the process, but as said by Alan Shearer it won’t happen immediately. When looking at the process which is needed to make this progression it will include coaches of all levels all over the country. It will include all levels of the traditional sports development continuum by Hylton et al (2001).

 

 

 

To create a better England team the FA must look into all levels of this continuum, starting at the Foundation level, improving the level of coaching and the quality of coaching and then making their way up to the Excellence level – finding ways to better the quality of coaching to ensure players get top quality coaching allowing them to improve as much as possible. By doing this the standard of players reaching the top excellence level should be of better quality.

 

Reference list:

Hylton, K. Totten, M. (2001) Developing ‘sport for all?’ addressing inequality in sport, in K. hylton and P.Bramham et al/ (eds) Sports development: Policy, Process and Practice, 1^st Edition, London: Routledge.

http://www.thefa.com/st-georges-park