The Youth Department have been busy holding trials at the training complex at Nene Park for next season's Under 9s to 14s in the last ten days with over 50 youngsters looking to join our successful Development Scheme, by taking part in coaching sessions and small-sided games. These have given the staff the best chance to assess them, within both training and match situations where they get plenty of touches of the ball.

Centre of Excellence Manager, Mark Starmer, has been thoroughly impressed by the standard of the local youngsters who attended the sessions. He commented "The overall level of the players has been very high and their attitude and application in the sessions have been spot on. The quality of the players is a credit to the work that our local clubs now do with their young players".

Mark added "the great thing for us is that from the trials we've been able to offer five players the chance to come with the Centre of Excellence Squads to play in the Watford International Tournament at the end of July and, if they do well, they have a great chance of breaking into the squads for next season".

"In addition to these five lads, we have invited a good number of the other boys back to train with our Development Squads at the start of next season and, if they do well, as I expect many will, they can continue to work on their game with us while still benefiting from training and playing for their local clubs"

In the next couple of weeks, Mark is expecting to confirm a more formal games programme for those Development Squads next season, which will see them play similar level squads from a number of local professional outfits in school holiday time. He commented "playing good level teams is exactly what we want for our boys. They can only improve by competing against such teams and, more importantly, it means that we can avoid weekend games that invariably clash with club games and means that players have a difficult choice of whether to play for us or their club which, quite honestly, has caused issues in the past".

Players who were unable to make the trials but feel that they would benefit from joining our Development Scheme should email Mark on youth.devt@rd-fc.co.uk.