Sport Yorkshire SY01 Web | Page 18

Shelley FOLLOW US ONLINE TWITTER.COM/SPORTYORKSHIRE 1 Integration “To ensure that all our young players enjoy a smooth transition into the senior game we have our U19s involved in age appropriate games and also we have four open age teams that play in the West Yorkshire League and the local district league which gives all our players the relevant experience they need to make the transition into the senior game form the age of 16. We set up a 4th team as a stepping stone for junior players to experience adult football before the junior football opportunity ends. Over the last four seasons we have seen this impact in a positive way in retaining junior players in U17 and U18 age groups. We also have created good coaching links between the junior and adult teams to allow players to develop and play at a level suited to there ability in the adult game.” Community “We are definitely a community club, not only do we provide football at the club; we also provide and host a variety of different social events throughout the course of the year. We have achieved the status of FA Community Charter Standard Club and we are very proud of this. Our club is open to all levels of players and we also have an established U16s ability counts side too. The UK Dog Show has been a phenomenal success over the last few years where we have over 100 campers camping on site to attend and participate in the show. We also hold birthday parties, conferences and retirements do’s to name a few.” Challenges “The biggest challenge for the club will be trying to gain funding to assist with the upkeep or any improvements the facilities will need in the next three years. Funding of any extent does not come at a cheap cost. The main priority will be to replace the astro turf carpet which is now seventeen years old, a cost which will be significant, in the region of £160,000.” Ambitions “Our ambitions for the club are to keep encouraging as many juniors to play football at our club and at the level they are capable of and also to help each and every player at Shelley CFC to progress into adult football at a suitable level. We also want our first team to play at the highest possible level on the football pyramid and this season we have been accepted into the Countries League which sees us move from the West Yorkshire Premier League. Now that we have been accepted this enabled us as a club to enter our first ever U19s team into the FA Youth Cup. This is something which is pivotal to the club’s future sustainability as we want all our juniors to be able to see where they could be potentially playing in years to come. We are also looking at replacing or training ground facility from 2G Astro turf to 4G in the next couple of season which will gives us a boost. This obviously comes at a price and we are very lucky to have a chairman that has already given us half the funding towards doing this. Without our chairman’s financial support I don’t think we would be where we are as a club right now.” 18 Issue 01