I hope you all enjoyed a good festive period and are looking forward to what will hopefully prove to be a successful 2010 for Norwich City Football Club.
With the current inclement weather conditions the Academy Arena at Colney Training Centre is proving to be an invaluable facility at the moment. Whilst it has been in place for numerous seasons now, the current conditions have seen the Arena being used more than ever.
For the last few weeks now the pitches at Colney have been mostly frozen or snow covered and unavailable for training sessions. As a result almost every youth team training session over the last three weeks has taken place in the Arena allowing the lads to keep their fitness levels high during their break in fixtures.
The first team have travelled to Carrow Road on a few occasions making use of the undersoil heating there, but they too have used the Arena regularly over the last few weeks.
In addition to this, our schoolboy groups also returned to training his week following their Christmas break and all eight junior age groups will make use of the Arena.
Without the Arena we would be forced to hire local indoor facilities which would obviously come at a cost and we would have to adjust our training times to adjust to the schedule of the facility we would be hiring.
The youth team's fixture list may well look very different over the next couple of weeks if the weather conditions do not improve, the fixture against Fulham scheduled for today has already been moved to February and next week's game at Crystal Palace will be a big doubt unless conditions improve.
Our schoolboy age groups are currently in the middle of a winter fixture break and do not restart their fixture programme until February 7, hopefully by then the weather conditions we are faced with at the moment would have eased a little and we can look forward to playing outside once more.
Whilst the Arena does not keep out the cold, in fact condensation on the walls and ceilings of the Arena often freeze at this time of year, the surface remains perfectly playable allowing use all year round and undoubtedly aiding fitness levels of all players associated with the Club.
Enjoy the game.
Ricky Martin
Academy Manager
