"Academy Manager" Powers England Stars of World Cup 2018

It's the youth academies of clubs around the country who develop those stars and online system Academy Manager is helping clubs to spend more time and money coaching instead of shuffling paper.

The system, from Thomas Cole Internet Solutions, is based around a secure and easy to use website used to communicate with young players, parents and the rest of the club. And clubs that have adopted the system report cost savings as well as a much lighter administration load.

Tony Ellis manages the Centre of Excellence at Rochdale AFC and has already seen the benefits. “With Academy Manager we have saved money (and many trees) as we no longer need to send out reams of paperwork. We can publish stuff quickly and easily on the website."

Academy Manager saves time in many situations, such as phoning round to cancel a match because of a water-logged pitch, or babysitting a photocopier spitting out 150 maps of an away venue.

And if parents need to know something they soon get used to checking the website instead of getting on the phone to hard-pressed academy staff.

Then there are the direct, provable cost savings. Phone bills are lower as the site becomes a centre of information. Printing and postage costs are reduced as newsletters and fixture lists are placed on the website instead. Clubs can even raise revenue using the online advertising space.

"It is easy to use, both for the staff to update and for parents and young footballers to get information from," said Tony. "As well as enabling us to publish fixtures, events and news, we are also using it to get parents more involved by publishing articles on varied subjects such as sports nutrition and treatment of injuries."

The secure website can be customised to suit a club's needs and both Blackpool FC and Stockport County FC have signed up alongside Rochdale. The Rochdale site gets over 2000 visits a month but Thomas Cole are not resting on their laurels. They have just launched a new version with more features that save time and increase benefits to the stars of tomorrow.

Thomas Cole's managing director Ross Johnson encouraged clubs to take a look at the new system. It has a cleaner and simpler front-end and revamped form fields, both of which make it even easier to use. There's also a new area where coaches can hold interactive assessments with players.

Chris Beech, Rochdale's Youth Team Manager, said: “Academy Manager is a fantastic way of putting your news over to staff, players and parents. It raises the profile of the academy internally and the website looks good to onlookers as well.”