With a good first six months of the season completed, players from our age ranges are starting to get noticed by clubs.
Our main aim this season was to be the unofficial youth team to Hereford United, training up our U18s and offering them to the first team as players to use. With everything that went on we ended up keeping as much distance from them as we could without losing our affiliation and worked at getting our boys ready for first team football wherever that may of been.
With a new Hereford FC hopefully being formed we would of course like the same type of affiliation but with no funding this year now coming out of Edgar Street, and everything up in the air, the players will be taking up some other offers available to them.
Carlos Moriera, one of the stand out performers this season in our U18s, spent last week at Coventry City and they want to offer him a youth team deal. Education is a stumbling block at the moment and they hope to sort that out so at the moment he remains with us. Joe Davies should sign for Wellington when fully fit and I need to speak to a local manager about 2 other players that impressed on Wednesday. Also, Lewis Fletcher looks likely to sign for a Southern Division League 1 team. That's is 5 players alone that may have been playing first team football at Edgar Street, and 5 players that may now not available for a new club.
On top of that our younger age groups have been scouted. James Aurelius of our U16s spent a couple of days at Leicester before Christmas and from that has been contacted by a league 1 and 2 team. A player that turned out for our U15s has been asked to go down to Fulham for a trial.
All of these players can move on for free, we don't have a hold on any of them as we aren't the youth team set up for a club. A club would be due money the same as with Billy Murphy and Jarod Bowen who both were part of set up and moved on for free because of the failings of HUFC this season. If a player moves from Chelsea's under 15s and is signed by them to play in their competition they would be due compensation, unfortunately that is not the case with us as we don't have that club affiliation.
It is double edged for us. We don't want to lose any players as we hope one day to be in a position to present them to a football club and make sure they don't go anywhere for free, but on the other side it shows how well we are doing here. Players getting spotted by league clubs makes us know that we are achieving our aims with these boys all the way down through the age groups.
Anyone who wants to join us to come for a trial in any of our age groups should go onto our website http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/unitedinthecommunity/ we are holding open trials for our U18 team in February and want a strong squad of 30+ for our Development and Performance teams so if you want a chance of making it in football and have been overlooked then please get in touch.
Thankyou
Rob Purdie