Unofficial Halesowen Town FC Forum

Hello
Here's a link to our forum.
You're very welcome to just browse or register and join in.
Please feel free to ask for any help or information you need.
See you soon
David

http://s10.zetaboards.com/IFC/index/

Thank you David, will have a look

Match Preview: Ilkeston vs Halesowen Town, Monday Night Football http://tinyurl.com/qhmgeed #uptheyeltz

Unusual playing on a Monday night especially after both sides have been involved in tough FA Cup games the weekend.

Any reason why it is a Monday and not a Tuesday?

All our midweek games are on Monday now and have been by choice of the club.
Ilkeston as a footballing town is split 50/50 between Forest and Derby and a large part of the thinking behind that is avoiding midweek clashes with those clubs.
Another factor is our Academy which means a fair number of those games also have to be fitted in to a weekly schedule for the NMG (New Manor Ground) and the Academy is a VERY important part of the whole set up here.
The whole structure is geared to producing home grown players to feed through to the first team (the average age of which is currently under 19 years)
The current joke going the rounds is that on away fixtures the team coach has to speed back home a.s.a.p. before its the "kids" bedtime.!

Following on from that last post this might be of interest.

http://www.ilkestonfc.co.uk/the-club

reddevildavid wrote:All our midweek games are on Monday now and have been by choice of the club.
Ilkeston as a footballing town is split 50/50 between Forest and Derby and a large part of the thinking behind that is avoiding midweek clashes with those clubs.
Another factor is our Academy which means a fair number of those games also have to be fitted in to a weekly schedule for the NMG (New Manor Ground) and the Academy is a VERY important part of the whole set up here.
The whole structure is geared to producing home grown players to feed through to the first team (the average age of which is currently under 19 years)
The current joke going the rounds is that on away fixtures the team coach has to speed back home a.s.a.p. before its the "kids" bedtime.!

Fair enough. Thanks for explaining!

Nice to see a positive story involving administration and Darren Caskey...

A nice write up on the history of Ilkeston and a very interesting approach to how to go about things. I've heard various comments about the running of Ilkeston such as "They're just Nott'm Forest's Youth team". Clearly there is more to it than that. Having read the academy brochure I like the fact education is weighted so heavily for benefit of the academy players. Good luck with the process, but hopefully you'll struggle tomorrow night for 90 minutes or so! ;-)
I'd love to see Halesowen start the process of going down this route in the future.

Its fair to say that in the early days following the club's reformation there was a good deal of scepticism from
a section of the clubs support who questioned the motives of SR Education and the viability of the blueprint put forward. (and in retrospect some of it was entirely understandable)
Some of this could be attributed to the fact that one of the bids which failed to acquire the right to reform the club emanated from a group of supporters and a certain degree of resentment was manifestly obvious for a period of time. If you have the time, or inclination, a trawl through past posts on the Supporters Group forum will give you a flavour of what, at times, became a particularly unpleasant and negative dialogue.
This wasn't helped by the cloud hanging over the club because of the potential impact of possible legal action over the pre season incident referred to in the previous link.
However the eventual disclosure of this by the club and strong signs of the original blueprint starting to bear fruit has gone a long way towards healing these divisions and hopefully that process will now continue.
As the saying goes..."there's no gain without pain"