8. Youth Academy
Your club, being the responsible community centre that it is, runs a youth academy where it will give schooling to promising local young cricketers.The condition of this building will need some looking after, and will deteriorate over time. You can make repairs to bring the standard back up again. The maximum condition that the building can be is superb. Everyone's academy will deteriorate at the same rate and at a constant amount of a sub-level each week. There is nothing that you can do to help stop that, apart from keeping an eye on it and making sure that repairs are carried out when required.
To order the repairs, go to Club -> Club Info and on the lower right hand side of the page is a "Order Repairs" button. One upgrade will cost £30,000 and will upgrade the Academy building by one full level. (ie: Legend is: Proficient = 8, Strong = 9, Superb = 10; Current Academy at 8, one repair 9, second repair 10)
On top of this each week, you can invest in Intensive Training Sessions (ITS). For every £2,000 that you invest into the academy in this way (up to a limit of £20,000 per week, earning you 10 sessions), you will receive an additional intensive training session. This investment will have no impact on the quality of your youth academy building. You can change the level of ITS investment on your Club Info page.
Your weeks investment to ITS will show up in your club page after each economic update. You will then, at a point of your choosing, be able to allocate these sessions to your new youth academy player. The player already possesses a degree of natural talent, but the level and distribution of this is completely random and will remain a mystery to you until the ITS and promotion process is completed. You can store up to a maximum of 100 ITS. Any subsequent payments will not be taken from your finances until you are under the 100 limit.
The total sessions that you can use on one player is limited by the condition of the Youth Academy building and the age of the player. You can allocate these sessions in any way that you want, but you cannot assign any more than 12 sessions to one skill. After you are happy with the session allocation you can promote the player to the senior squad. As they join your squad, you will see the benefits of the intensive training sessions as well as their initial natural talent, making up their overall skills. This does sound complicated, but the Youth Academy page will make it very straightforward for you.
On the last day of each season, all players in Battrick have a birthday. As part of their preparation for the new season, all youth academies will close briefly from when the Players' Birthday update occurs until the first Financial Update of the new season. If you did not promote a youth from your academy in Week 16, then you will need to wait until your academy re-opens after the Financial Update.