Stevenage’s Head of Youth, Jimmy Gilligan has spoken to the Comet about the club’s new Centre of Excellence:
‘It`s going well at the moment and we`re making good progress,” Gilligan told the Comet, “We`ve got our nine to 16-year-old programme up and running and our under-18 programme so from when we started and not really having any teams in place we have now actually got them in place from under-nine straight through to under-18.’
Having set so many teams up in such a short space of time, Gilligan has also been busy recruiting staff:
“I`ve had to appoint a Centre of Excellence Manager, physio, administrator, development coaches. Every day we`re working all hours and there really aren`t enough hours in the day – we coach the kids and then when back in the office there`s a million things to do.”
Amid all this creativity and hard work, the Youth Team managed to win their first game and impress legendary former Boro manager Paul Fairclough (now working at Barnet):
“We have started off well in the league and the win over Wycombe was a great start. I was over at Barnet a week afterwards and Paul said it was a result that made people sit up and think.’
The Centre of Excellence is also looking for sponsorship. Gilligan told the Comet:
“We need a number of things, the kit is not yet sponsored, the minibus could do with some company coming in and having its name splashed on the side, there are boys travelling from London and it`s costing them money and maybe someone could help to sponsor them so they can get a season ticket. Any little ideas from anyone or anyone who has anything they can help us with I`d love them to get in touch and we would also look at ways that we can give something back.”
The Comet’s article – see here – also provided contact details for anybody wishing to help:
Anyone interested in contacting the Centre of Excellence should call (01438) 368068 and ask for administrator Kelly Andrews.
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