Town recently launched their new Academy Association initiative at a press briefing at Playford Road.
Academy director Bryan Klug was joined by academy sponsorship manager Simon Milton, joint-MDs Jonathan Symonds and Ian Milne, current players and academy graduates Tommy Smith and Luke Hyam and former Blue, academy alumnus, sponsor and parent Kieron Dyer.
Klug outlined the importance of Town’s academy moving up to Category One status: "Over the years the club has had a terrific youth policy. I came here in the 1970s when Sir Bobby was manager and ever since then the club has invested heavily in youth and we’ve had a lot of very, very good players come through here.
"There have been a lot of changes in the last few years with the EPPP and youth development has moved on, as the game has generally, and if you want to be producing players at the top level you’ve got to be playing amongst the very, very best, testing yourself, both as a coach and as players.
"So, I think it’s vitally important for this club and I think football in this country now needs to produce good young players, based around English players.
"In our region, in Suffolk, East Anglia, we need to be the best that we can possibly be. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for a few years at Tottenham and I know what the big clubs are doing and how much they are investing and they’ve got terrific organisations.
"We’ve got that here, we’ve got all the ingredients we need, we’ve got the facilities and I’ve got some top, top people working for me who have been through the system.
"So, we have all those ingredients, but we have one major ingredient that probably the big clubs won’t have and that’s that we will give anyone who is good enough an opportunity here. That doesn’t always happen at Premier League clubs.
"It’s absolutely vital for this club that if we are going to produce the top level of player, we are Category One.
"I know we’ve got a long way to go because the pecking order of academies is just the same as in the Premier League, but we need to be amongst them so we can test ourselves, our players get great tests, the parents are attracted to us and see that pathway through to the first team that we know we’ve got.”
Town’s academy is currently Category Two, which requires a minimum spend by a club of £480,000 to which the Premier League will add a grant of another £480,000, although Town are spending in advance of £1 million including the grant.
Category One clubs - Middlesbrough, Leicester, Reading and Blackburn are currently the only ones in the Championship - must pay out £1.5 million in order to receive a grant of £800,000. Simon Milton is looking to raise £500,000 of that £1.5 million via the new initiative.
He explained: "The budget goes up for Category One, so we’ve launched an Academy Association, which gives supporters and businesses the opportunity to support us.
"I’ve raised money for the academy for the last seven years and we’ve been raising between £100,000 and £125,000 a year.
"Now we’re going to try and raise £500,000 on the back of the launch of Category One. I’ve had a businessman with me this morning who has signed up for the next five years at £1,000 a year.
"A committed supporter, he loves the youth team and sees exactly where his money’s going. He’s been a long-term supporter and I need more of those.
"As part of Category One, we’re running an U15 team this year, which we haven’t done for a couple of years, and I’ve managed to get that team sponsored by another local businessman, who is very much a supporter of the academy.
"He’s going to get his company name on the front of the U15 shirt and he sees that as his way of giving something back to the football club.
"He’s been a supporter for many, many years and he wants to see more youth players come through the youth system into the first team.
"Bryan has said having 50 per cent of the first team made up of academy graduates is our five-year plan and going through the current squad list, we’re probably running at about 33 per cent at the moment.
"So, if you look at all our professional players, and that’s around 30, I think we’ve got 11 or 12 that have come through the academy.
"We’re not far away at the moment and I think supporters love to see homegrown players in the first team.
"Every single sponsor that gets involved at any level can feel that they played their part in Tommy Smith’s development, Luke Hyam’s development and the players of the future.
"But it’s going to be a tough challenge because it’s tough out there financially and we’re not asking for anybody to get on board and do things that they can’t afford, just would they like to support us in our campaign.
"There are thousands of supporters out there who cared enough to sign the Supporters Trust petition and it would be nice to meet up with these people and say that there’s now an opportunity to come on board at a level I think everybody can afford and support us.
"All the information about the business packages and the pricing structure is all on our new website which is at www.itfcacademy.com.
"The information is there, I’ve been building the website with the Marcus Evans Group and it’s up and running.
"From that website they can request a meeting with me. I think it’s vitally important for me to get out to their businesses to see what they do, but also to bring them here, bring them to the academy where they can see what’s going on.
"So far, it’s started very, very well but after today’s launch, the website goes live and I’m going to be out and about in front of business people all over the county.”