It’s been a while since we caught up with our Under 18 Manager George Champion. Thanks to George for his time this week.
It’s been a stop start season – how frustrating has that been?
“Yes… for us and so many teams across our league. The boys’ commitment and dedication during this time has been fantastic. They kept arriving to training, week on week to learn and keep fitness high. We could see at times that they were understandably frustrated about not playing games but so many other teams were in the same boat with the weather affecting game time.
To keep the lads motivated we tried to vary our approach to training. For example, one evening we did a fitness session over at St John’s Beaumont School Sports Hall, which somehow ended up with us all playing football tennis for the last 20 minutes—a brilliant team building exercise!
This break in games also gave an opportunity for the lads to ask us questions about their development. We know all of our players have individual aspirations for success this season in addition to the collective team goal… which has also been a great motivator.
James Field and Miggi have stepped up brilliantly in their roles as Captain and Vice since Monty’s ACL injury. They’ve been involved with the First Team for just over a month and we have had some really positive feedback from both Webby and the rest of the management team, as well as a lot of the First Team boys.”
Still 8 league matches to go, do you have a points target in mind, or what’s the ambition?
“As a team, we have a goal that all members are aware of. As it stands, we have already eclipsed last year’s point total, but it isn’t necessarily about that. Our target is, and always has been, continuous development and improvement. We want to develop players individually and as a team to be able to battle for points and advance beyond U18’s football.
We’ve already made great progress this season compared to last: we reached the third qualifying round of the FA Youth Cup – narrowly losing to Bracknell and accumulating more points in the league by December than we had in all of last season.
The core of the players is pretty much the same as last season with some great new additions. Harry Evans continues to score goals, and a number of key players have also stepped up again this season including Zachary Woodford (loads of goals from the wing), Miguel and James Field. New additions like Thomas Roberts, Alexander Wyatt and Cobey Divers have also made great impacts since joining in the Summer.
Mat, Miguel Snr and Monty have been fantastic in their roles on the Management Team and have also worked exceptionally hard this season to enable us to have the best ability to achieve the team’s goals and give us the best ability to progress players from the WEFC Youth System, into our team and then, hopefully, into the First Team.
Thank you to everyone for the continued support this season. Our lads truly appreciate your contribution to their development as young players.”
