Ellis' Academy is win-win for Eccleshill United and Bradford City (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Ellis' Academy is win-win for Eccleshill United and Bradford City

2:50pm Friday 10th February 2012 in Sport By Ian Whiting

Former Bantams winger Mark Ellis is delighted his old club are now able to take some of his overseas recruits but is doubly glad that Eccleshill United are also reaping some reward from the players.

Ellis runs a football coaching academy for students who are in the UK from abroad taking degrees through Richmond University.

Ellis and the young football hopefuls on his programme are based in Leeds.

Some played for the Eagles at the beginning of last season but were stopped by the authorities because of work-permit issues.

Being students, they were allowed to work on a part- time basis only, for a limited number of hours and the Borders Agency questioned their involvement.

It took months of wrangling, red tape and meetings because it was a ground-breaking initiative and there were no precedents for the rule makers to fall back on.

Last week, Ellis finally got the clearance he wanted.

Before the ruling, players like Nahki Wells and Joey Spivack had to leave the course and make applications for work permits to be allowed to sign for full-time clubs.

Now all the players are free to have trials at clubs and play at semi-pro level.

Ellis said: “Going back to when I was asking clubs to come on board and embrace this new scheme, Eccleshill were the first to show an interest.

“They wanted a piece of the action when the others didn’t really know what I was talking about or how big this was.

“Now we have one player in the Bradford City team (Nahki Wells), another in full-time training with them and a third being looked at closely.

“We are trying to get Joey fixed up with a club in Scandinavia. and we have links with other clubs in Europe.

“Eccleshill have benefited because a lot of these players have been regulars for some time with them and also because of a raised profile due to the publicity.

“I couldn’t be happier for them because Adrian (Benson, director of Eccleshill football club) has always been very supportive.

"He has insight because he knew how good this was going to be right from our first meeting.”