The newly formed academy side has been running since July 2004 under the control of Mike Stannard and Andy Taylor. Mike is a coach with Goole based junior football club Parkside Raiders and met Andy when he visited Parkside as a spectator. Andy was so impressed with Parkside's performance he asked Mike if he could get involved in coaching them, and the rest as they say is history.

Mike says "Parkside is a great junior football club and hopefully the young lads there will develop and come through to the academy side".

Mike was approached by Des O'Hearne, Goole AFC's chairman last season with the idea of forming a youth academy; a place where new and talented players could develop their skills, gain valuable experience, and come through to the reserves team. Mike agreed, and at the start of pre-season 2004/2005 both Mike and Andy began work on the project.

Running two teams at any club is a costly exercise, but with three it begins to get very expensive. Kit, footballs, extra ground rent and the match officials, not to mention the added cost of floodlighting at evening games, new sponsors had to be found for things like the match ball etc. Various local businesses like Portside Ltd were keen to help the club and readily dug into their pockets to support us.

You may only see Mike and Andy at the matches, but a fantastic amount of work and commitment has to go into a project like this. They put in an incredible number of hours behind the scenes and the result is, a strong highly motivated team of players who all live for their football. Over the next few seasons we will see the tree begin to bear fruit as some of the players start to make their debut in the reserves side.

What we have here at Goole AFC now is a fantastic pool of resource to dip into; a route for all of the talented youth in Goole, right from a very early age, to be able to get involved in grass roots football, but with the talents of people like Mike, Andy, Paul Smith, and Paul Marshall they will be able to see themselves progress through to football at a professional level.

Now you have read a bit about how the Academy started, go and meet the players and read their profiles Here.