It’s Academy Day at Griffin Park tomorrow as Nottingham Forest come to West London to take on The Bees. Saturday’s match will be given over to the Academy to celebrate the work done at Jersey Road and Uxbridge High School to produce a new generation of Brentford stars.
Members of the Academy will be at the game tomorrow and there will be a football demonstration by some of the players at half-time. Saturday’s copy of The Bees Review is also dedicated to the Academy and contains interviews with Academy Director Ose Aibangee, Secretary Andreas Kikilias and former Professional referee Colin Downey who has voluntarily worked for the Academy for more than 35 years.
This season has been a breakthrough year for the Academy at Jersey Road with Jermaine Udumaga and Josh Clarke both featuring in the Sky Bet Championship while Josh Laurent and Courtney Senior made their professional debuts for Brentford, but Ose believes this is only the beginning.
“The key next step for the Academy is to get players playing regularly in the first-team,” said Ose, speaking to Bees Review. "I feel we are nearly there and we will start to see players next season, if not this season. We’ve already had Josh Clarke, Courtney Senior, Josh Laurent and Jermaine Udumaga play in the first-team but now we want to someone in there every week.
"“Even if he is not a starter we want to get someone in the squad every week, then we want an every week starter and from there we can start to trickle more players through the system year on year. The foundation is in place and we have some very good players in the system. The first-team have got some really fantastic players which makes it doubly hard but it is only a matter of time before we do make the next step and get that player in the first-team squad regularly.”
Saturday’s copy of Bees Review will be on sale at Griffin Park, priced at £3. Alongside the Academy Day features, the 84 page programme, includes an interview with Nico Yennaris about his time at Brentford, a Ryan Woods poster as well as a pictorial review of our recent first-team matches.
The official matchday programme will be available from programme sellers at Griffin Park.