Our young Colls side registered their second big win in the FA Youth Cup last night, as our U18’s beat Brighouse Town in a West Yorkshire Derby 8-2 in front of 120 fans at The Hunters Stadium. We spoke with our Head of Academy for The Colls (Lee Kelsey) to discuss the victory and how the lads have been getting on…
Lee congratulations on a big win last night in the FA Youth Cup, firstly how pleased were you with the result?
Thanks Charlie, obviously the result was nice but we were more pleased with aspects of the performance. We set up specifically against an opposition who clearly had threats and I felt we coped with them really well, whilst still implementing our style within the game. The FA Youth Cup is a fantastic competition to be involved in and we are delighted to be in the draw for the next round.
The lads seemed to have come together really quickly scoring 22 goals in our first two ties in the competition. How pleased are you with the group you’ve got?
We couldn’t be happier. We have around 50 lads on programme and they have all made a great start to the year. We have trained since August a couple of times a week and had a lot of games in preparation for the start of the league’s this week. All of the lads have come in and added to the culture we are trying to create and the two performances in the Youth Cup have been the cherry on top of the cake, but as we said to the lads after last night’s game – we feel this is just the start of what we can achieve.
Tell us a little bit about the scholarship programme and what it entails?
We run our own education programme with our education provider VLUK. The learners will study a level 2 or level 3 BTEC Qualification based on their GCSE results. Alongside this, we train two or three times per week and we have three squads playing fixtures each week. One in the National Youth Alliance League, one in the AOC College Yorkshire and Humber League and one in the Sheffield and Hallamshire College League. All of these league’s are very good standards and mean our players are playing in professional environments, where they will develop. In the classroom, we have highly qualified and experienced staff who create a fantastic learning environment which has the learners needs at the front of our focus.
What is the goal for this years cohort both on and off the pitch?
I’m not someone who will put numbers into our goals for the year. My message to the lads both on and off of the pitch is to try to take something out of each lesson or session which will help you develop. If they do that we can’t complain. Further to this, we are trying to help learners move on to the next step in their journeys, so it would be to make them more employable or help prepare them for Higher Education. In terms of the football, obviously the transition into men’s football at this age is key, getting into the semi-pro and in and around our first team are things we are looking at for our older scholars.