Guillem Balague: Building a future at Biggleswade United

I said from the moment I arrived here that I was not here as a publicity stunt or looking for quick and unbacked success but for the long term; to build something of which the town could be proud.

To that aim we are slowly, but surely, building our new Academy with the limited facilities we have available to us, and doing so on the basis of a solid, professional coaching organisation that is unequalled anywhere in the area.

We look to teach a coaching and lifestyle programme that we hope will help our young charges not just play the game to the best of their ability but also try to show them how to get the very most from their lives, off the field as well as on it.

At the moment we have boys sides at under 7, U10, U12, U15 and U17 and two girls sides at U14 and U15 as well as our Under 23s and the first team.

We also have a partnership with Stevenage that will provide a two year Elite Development programme of sport and education for 25 school leavers.

Our coaches will meet every month to discuss how things are progressing, how they can help each other, how they can improve. We see ourselves fundamentally as a coaching club and we have already had visitors from other clubs and also other countries that have come to see what we are trying to do.

My dream of course is that one day we will all be able to train together on one huge and publicly backed 3G facility not least because it will serve as tangible evidence from our leaders that talk of ‘inspiring generations’ was always more substance than mere rhetoric and not just the pragmatic soundbite and a show of political expediency that some cynics would have us believe.

I live in hope.

Certainly on the pitch we can now look forward to a wonderful day out in the First Qualifying round of the FA Cup against our old friends, Hitchin Town.

But there’ll be no more cup talk until after our match against Colney Heath on Saturday, a side that historically have always caused us problems. It will be interesting to see if we can carry on from where we left off last week.

See you there.