“We wanted to have a connection with the town” - Shaymen back training in Halifax thanks to partnership with Calderdale College

Building on the relationship forged between the college and the club’s youth team set-up, Town’s first-team now spend one day a week at the Inspire Centre.

And Halifax manager Pete Wild is keen to increase the amount of time his squad spends in the town during the week.

“It’s something we wanted to do, to come back into Halifax,” he said.

“For a lot of the players and myself, the only time we really come here is for home games so we wanted to have a connection with the town.

“We’ve already got an excellent connection with the academy being here and, sporadically before away games, we came here a couple of times.

“It’s a fantastic set-up so we wanted to try and get a closer connection.

“I have a lot of lads that come from over the other side of the hill, and with training in Leeds, that’s a big commitment.

“With wanting to go full-time, I wanted to try and find a venue that was halfway in-between that could pacify everybody.

“With all those things put together and how accommodating the college have been to us, it just made sense.”

The first-team use their own changing room and medial room, have access to the sports hall, gym and video analysis equipment, and use the college’s outdoor pitches.

“The college are excellent in letting us use the gym, which is far bigger than our gym at the training ground, so it means we can get some good quality upper body work done after a game at the weekend,” Wild said.

“We get use of half of the sports hall so we can do analysis if we’re playing on Tuesday night or we can do some mobility work.

“That’s generally the first hour, which is off the grass, and then the second hour’s on the grass, whether that’s team prep, training or whatever it might be, to make sure we get some football out of it as well.”

Craig Waterworth, Inspire Centre manager at the college, said: “We’ve got a long-standing partnership with the football club.

“In terms of the academy set-up, we provide the education and then do all the football.

“It’s superb that the first-team are now training here because not only is it good to have them at the college but in terms of the academy lads, for them to see the first-team here too shows clear synergy and gives them something to aspire to.

“It’s brilliant for the academy lads.

“The club approached us and said would the college be interested in them coming here and we said ‘of course’.

“It’s only on Mondays up until Christmas but with a view to them coming here full-time.”

The college’s partnership with the Town youth programme is now into its sixth year.

“We’ve got over 80 footballers on the programme, which is not only a credit to the partnership but a credit to the coaching and college staff,” said Craig.

“It’s evolved every year. When I took over as general manager three years ago there were about 50, and now it’s 86 footballers across four teams, the first two are the Halifax youth teams and then there’s two academy teams.

“So it’s really going from strength-to-strength. We’ve stood the test of time and not just maintained it, but improved it by getting good coaching staff and moving with the times.

“These academy programmes are a very competitive market now and players are going here, there and everywhere. But we’ve got players who travel in from Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds.

“We’ve got other sport academies as well - basketball, women’s football and Halifax rugby league.

“But the partnership with the football club is the only pathway into their first-team, so for our students to have that is second-to-none.

“Students coming here to get on the football programme are coming because of FC Halifax Town, and for us to be partnered with them is a massive scalp for the college.

“Having it all under one roof makes such a difference in attracting prospective students to the programme. Obviously it’s the only programme to offer a way into the first-team, barring getting scouted.”

Steve Nichol, Town’s head of youth development, believes the connection between the youth team set-up and the first-team at the club has never been stronger.

“It’s the closest we’ve ever been to the first-team, not only the fact that the youth team lads can see the first-team training opposite them, but how they prepare, what they go through before each game, it’s all experience and exposure to being around that environment,” he said.

“It’s a huge part of their development, and it makes it easier to send players across as and when they’re needed as it’s all under one roof rather than having to organise the logistics of getting a player who’s doing really well with us across to Leeds.

“So we can maintain their education and their youth-team work around it, and they can dip in and out of the first-team as and when required.”

Wild is a former youth coach at previous club Oldham, and knows the importance of a strong connection to the first-team.

“Our youth team at Oldham used to train every day next to the first-team and there’s nothing better than them looking across and thinking ‘right, that’s where I need to be, I can see it with my own eyes’, they get to interact with the first-team players and start to know them,” he said.

“And more often than not, two or three of them get called across to come and join in.

“So it all makes it that one club mentality that I wanted when I came here.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to produce our own and the only way we’re going to do that is by giving them a chance and putting them in that environment, so if we’re here, they can see us here and that helps, not just the youth team but the town and the people attending the college who can see the local professional football team here and about the place.

“Coming from Oldham, the pride I had producing people from Oldham and Manchester, I want to do the same here.

“I want to recruit local people that know about the club and understand the club and the area, and on top of that, people who have attended the college and our youth programme.

“That’s massively important because that gives a lifeblood to the town and a lifeblood to the process and the programme we’re trying to run.

“We’ve got to produce a pathway. Coming on this programme is a pathway.

“They’ve got to be good enough, don’t get me wrong, but if they can see a pathway, we’ll attract better players, we’ll attract more people and the programme gets more credence than it’s already got.”

And Nichol is grateful to Wild and his assistant manager Chris Millington for their input.

“In the past we’ve had players who’ve been on the pathway and made progress but in Pete and Chris, they have a good understanding of what’s required but they also have the patience in young players, they’re prepared to give them a chance and work with them, and they’re prepared to work beyond their remit as first-team staff to build a bigger pathway within the club,” Nichol said.

“There’s a closeness in that we all want to see young players making inroads on the pathway and there’s work going on behind-the-scenes to try and strengthen that pathway as well, to give the players we have the best possible chance of achieving their potential.”

Nichol also praised the college for their facilities, which he believes helps Town’s youth programme be as good as any in non-league.

“We’ve been here for six, seven years as a programme,” Nichol said. “Facilities are traditionally difficult to come by in Halifax, the logistics aren’t easy because it’s on two hills, so it’s not always easy trying to get a flat piece of land.
“But what you have at the college is everything under one roof in terms of indoor facilities like the gym, sports hall which we use for futsal on an evening, classrooms which can be used as analysis suites, plenty of changing rooms and grass and 3G pitches.

“The fact it’s all on one site makes it much easier.

“The college have been great in helping us establish the youth team programme, and extending that towards the first-team increasingly over recent years.

“I don’t think you’re going to get any better facilities in Halifax, and you’re not going to get many better programmes operating outside the Football League.”

”The more time we can spend here the better,” added Wild. “And the more time we’re in Halifax the better.

“The college know what we need and we understand what the college want from us.

“If it’s something we can build on then 100 per cent we want to because it just makes sense.

“I see as a first step as building on the relationship we’ve already got, and if that means we can be based there more, then fantastic.”