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YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
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As a club we have always believed in the development of young players. It
was some 5 years ago that we put a specific plan in place to try and
safeguard our future with regard to player recruitment. At that time we
were having reasonable success, but a number of our players were reaching
"retirement" age, therefore we made a conscious decision to
tackle the issue.
We identified that the majority of youngsters when they finished Hull Boys Sunday Football League at U16 level had very little opportunity to stay together as a group. We felt that we could give them an opportunity to stay together but obviously on a Saturday. We held a number of discussions, which resulted with us reaching an agreement with well known local boys club Hessle Sporting. We agreed that boys who finished at U16 could join us on a Saturday if they so wished. To take it a stage further and to begin to bring the two clubs closer together we began to involve ourselves with some coaching at Hessle and we invited those boys who were to join us the following season down to our training. A number of players joined us the first season of the agreement, allowing us to play them along with 3 or 4 of our experienced players to guide them through in County League Division 4. It was this season that saw Ian Gray step down from first team football to manage the side and commence his role as the head of youth development. To increase involvement between the two clubs Ian joined the Hessle Sporting committee with Hessle Chairman, John Thorpe, joining our committee. From this original group remain the likes of Jamie Ham and Danny Rhodes, two players who are fully involved with life at the club. It was this group of players who in this first season reached the final of the Dr Lilley Cup for U18's played at Boothferry Park, where they were defeated by an outstanding Hall Road Rangers team. The following season saw us open up our then facilities at the Hull & ER sports club on Chanterlands Avenue, to the next group of youngsters from Hessle, in fact John Thorpe's team. Unfortunately due to cost factors we were unable to remain at Hull & ER for more than two seasons which was disappointing, but this did not prevent the steady flow of players coming to us. Early in 1999 the opportunity to become involved in the exciting new developments here at Hill Top arose. Immediately we identified the opportunity to develop our own junior set up. We held discussions with Hessle to see if we could reach an agreement with them to join forces with us here at Westella, under the Westella banner. Unfortunately, agreement could not be reached, with Hessle a club which has been around over twenty years not wishing to lose it's autonomy which we found totally understandable. We remain grateful for the help and support we received from our friends at Hessle with links still remaining. Once knowledge of developments here at Hill Top became public then a number of clubs made contact. One of these, Westfield AFC held discussions with us and immediately we recognised that the two clubs shared similar ideals on how they view the development of young players. Westfield Chairman Dave Richardson and his colleagues were happy to come under the Westella banner with all the benefits this can offer. Therefore as of the coming season we shall have teams competing at U11 to U18 age groups and also two girls teams competing in the HBSFL Girls league. There are a number of plans in place to cement the integration between the two clubs, involving coaching development, mini soccer, code of conduct and a number of other developments. The coming season, dependent on pitch preparation is progressing will see our U14's, U15's and two U16's teams play up at Hill Top.
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