Dear Players & Parents,

Well done and thank you to everyone who submitted payment for our Madrid trip in October. We informed JSSi players that we would try to take everybody to play Club Atletico de Madrid but warned that it may not be possible with the trip being proposed reasonably last minute.
(We purposely told the boys and not parents as the players must learn to withhold information if they are to be football players both on and off the turf.) 

We have been waiting for confirmation from the petition of Club Atletico de Madrid (Mr Estebaranz) frustratingly for well over 8 weeks.

Finally, we received confirmation via email late last Tuesday consenting the tour.

Easy Jet flights were very reasonable originally, but had since soured from an average of £90 in October to £190 in November (on Wednesday last week) making the January date impossible for all players/squads to travel.

However, all is not lost since we have managed to book flights with Ryan Air out of Stanstead for our U12 & U13 squads (25 players) on the 3rd-5th January together with Tom Welch, Paul Taylor and myself, keeping to the original plan with these age groups.

We propose the following options to Stanstead Airport:

• Hire Mini Buses. Does anybody know where we can borrow 2 minibuses?
• Drive cars (PT/JS/TW & 4 volunteer drivers)
• Hire coach/mini bus & charge everyone extra? (between £25)

We will do our best to provide U10/14/15/16 with new dates which is governed by the petition of Atletico Mr Estebaranz.

It is very likely that our unfortunate groups will travel in June 2012 at the back end of Atletico's tight training and games schedule. The exact date will be confirmed when we meet Mr Estebaranz in Madrid in January.

We may consider flying our U15/16 squad to Finland instead as we may offer some JSSi players the opportunity to trial to become a scholar for pro Club "SJK" who have the best facilities in Scandinavia. This has yet to be arranged and discussed with SJK. Click here to visit Club SJK;

On a happier note, we hope you like the gantry for home games for us to record games, the new kit, new website and the nutritional support offered via Wendy Griffin to all players.

We are looking to looking to introduce a day release program to accommodate our U12-U15 Academy outfield & GK's on either a Tuesday or Friday (For Free).

We are also looking to offer Jssi Academy players a Clifton College post 16 scholarship (in partnership with clifton College). We will keep you updated on developments. This will rival filton college & bath uni edu/football scholarship programs.

Please ensure that our Saturday kit is held with staff & players until Friday nights until Clifton College buy a storage shed.

Finally, our aim is to implement coaches/managers to manage Saturday's. Our past & present parent volunteers have been superb managers over the past 7 years. Our aim in 2012 is to modernise standards and articulate our philosophy internally to marry centres of premier or football league academies or centres of excellence.

Finally congratulation to Nathan Legge who was offered a scholarship with Millfield School!

Please email Tom with any concerns, questions or queries.

Best regards from Finland,


Jamie Shore
Director