Petersfield Town Juniors News – May 2012
PTJ Development Teams
PTJ have now launched Youth Development for the U13/14 and U15/16 age groups, under the management of Kevan Birkett who has many years’ experience with youth football at Town Juniors.
The idea is to develop players within the various Petersfield teams of those age groups, giving them the opportunity of having structured training sessions organised by James Goulsbra of Aspire coaching, and then arranging games against various other local development teams and academies.
Both squads have recently played teams from Portsmouth and Aldershot Town where they have acquitted themselves very well and we are in the process of arranging more games with them as well as other clubs in the area.
The long term aim is to ease their development into the senior club through the Youth team and then onto reserve and first team football, as some find the leap from junior football to senior football a bit daunting and in previous years players have either left to join other local clubs or stopped playing altogether.
It is early days, but based on all of the young talent coming through the Town Junior ranks, it looks as if the conveyer belt of players moving onto the senior team should improve over the coming years, which will give the town a good community club to support.
Heartlands FC vs. Petersfield Veterans
During April the Petersfield Veterans team hosted a match against Heartlands FC at Love Lane. Heartlands FC are linked to the Christian Charity Faith & Football, which is based in Portsmouth, and is linked to Portsmouth Football Club through former professional footballer Linvoy Primus.
Faith & Football run a variety of Community & Educational programmes such as Community Leagues in inner city areas, the Extra Time Literacy Scheme helping underachieving infant school readers, the Social Enterprise & Business Challenge in Secondary schools and a Team Talk Life Skills & Football programme, to name a few!
The match was won by the more youthful Heartlands FC by 4 goals to 2, but the Vets did put on a spirited display in the 2nd half which rolled back the years.
The clubs are pleased to be associated with such a wonderful local charity – www.faithandfootball.org.uk
