Youth and Centre of Excellence News

Chester City Centre of Excellence

As the season draws to a close we can take a look back on the highlights of what has been another great leap forward in the Youth department.

We welcomed on board the new first year scholars in July and little did we know what a good group we had taken on, given the fact that the second years had also had a very good previous season we were really excited for the forthcoming campaign. With a good start in pre- season, Fitness coach Julian Owen had shown what an advantage it was in getting good levels of fitness in at an early stage  and this was to prove itself in the second half of the season. We again raised the bar in the FA Youth cup beating Marine, Curzon Ashton and York City, only losing out to a terrible refs decision away at Tottenham Hotspur .

With some of the second years getting the call up to the first team squad at the turn of the year  the first year scholars did themselves and the coaching staff proud by beating the likes of Burnley, Preston  and Oldham at Youth Alliance level and  managed to be part of some really good performances for reserve team coach Billy Gerrard. They finished off with a good 2 – 2 draw away at Rochdale and eagerly look forward to next season with the new first years .We would at this stage like to wish all our Second year boys Jack Rowlands , Tom Vickers, Glenn Rule, Andy Mitchell, Kieran Morrin, Brett Robson, Jay Gregory, Paul Doorman, Steven Thorpe and Giovanni Fellichielo all the very best of luck for the future and hope they can secure pro contracts at the club.

The Centre of Excellence finished off the season on Sunday with a development day playing Academy Club Crewe Alexander.
We are lucky to have some fabulous prospects at the club from the under 9s up to the 16s and am constantly receiving letters and phone calls from players wishing to come and trial with us as they are aware we are a club with a very good reputation in Youth Development .

We have over 120 boys at the club and as you can imagine this takes an awful lot of organisation and this would not be possible without all the help I receive  from the 20 staff  working for us who put in many hours and travel many miles to help and develop our future players. We also receive lots of support from those behind the scenes, so my thanks go out to club owner Stephen Vaughan who has for years been there for us, Paul Murray who has worked tirelessly on the admin. side with me and all of our sponsors, including the ones you don’t see and are just happy to help young people.

I am personally very excited for next season as the new training ground will be  fully operational which will give us all a place to call our own. My thanks go out to Stuart Banks and his wife Emma for having the confidence to support the Football club in this venture.
Finally I would like to say good luck in the final two games to the first team,  the  Gaffer and the staff .

Yours in sport
Mark Newman
C of E manager
CCFC