Dartford Youth Academy head coach Russell Searle’s monthly round-up of the Youth Academy side of the club

October has been a productive month for us, we have had some really good results across the board of the Youth Academy set-up. 

The JPL league campaign started for Under-12s and 16s and our Under-14s and 15s currently sit top of their respective leagues.

Under-9s and 10s have also had excellent starts, especially the 9s who went unbeaten in October. 

The standout performers in October were the Under-14s, who beat Welling to secure top spot in their group winning four out of four. That takes them to the national knockout rounds, a competition which they won last year.

As well as league action, our Academy went into action against several pro clubs. 

Our Under-8s and 9s went to Crystal Palace’s new training ground and gave a very good account of themselves. 

In the October half-term, we also hosted Gillingham’s development centre for Under-7s and 8s.

Most notably, Southend’s academy came down to play us from our under-9s to 16s, hosted at Princes Park. All the games were very competitive with the Under-9s and 14s having standout performances. The under-16s also had a really close game which finished 0-0.

We had over 250 players attend, over 25 coaching staff and hundreds of spectators came to the matches at Princes Park, so it was a really good day for the club and the development side of the game. We were very pleased across the board at performances and the turnout. 

This has also already been covered on social media, but we had both Ady and Les from the first team running training sessions with the Under-16s and development goalkeepers, which they really enjoyed. It was nice for the coaches to see how they took the sessions and they really enjoyed it, too. 

We also must mention Alfie Powell from our Under-13s. He was signed by Gillingham’s academy which is a really proud moment for us.

Of course, it is hard, you have key player who play week in week out and are a big influence in the squad and it can leave a hole. However, when a player makes that transition, we are just really happy for them.

You want players to go on and start for the first-team as we have seen in recent years, but it doesn’t always happen. When players go on to pro clubs it gives you a sense of achievement, it makes you very proud and shows what we are doing here is working.  

We keep in contact with the parents and find out how players are doing when they make that transition and we always welcome players back, if it doesn’t work out the door is always open. 

We are excited to see how he gets on at Gillingham and throughout his career. 

The only sad part is that at non-league level we get no protection or compensation from the pro club to then reinvest back into the academy.

The new players who have come in this season are really starting to show why they have been signed.

We had to do a lot of recruitment over the summer and for some of the players it was their first time in an academy setting. 

Most of them have had six weeks of pre-season and are now eight weeks into the actual season. They’ve all settled in really well. 

We get fantastic training numbers, these boys represent their school, Kent and their Sunday grassroots teams as well as having to deal with their school studies.

They have lots of commitments and they still turn up here every week for training and matchdays, they have a great attitude. We are starting to see some really big performances from the new players.

Looking to November, it’s getting colder and darker. We are going to be stacked with league matches and will be navigating our way through the weather with training and matchdays. That is our focus for the rest of the month.  

By Riley Finch

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