The past week was a really positive one for The New Saints FC Academy, writes Jason Brindley.
Following training on Wednesday, our U13s and U14s trialled a new Virtual Reality headset that we are bringing to The Venue.
The games include a virtual reality escape room, with different challenges you have to complete as a team to escape. I had a go myself and was really impressed with the graphics and motion. The boys really enjoyed it and worked together well too.
The same two groups had another team-building exercise on Saturday, at our first team game in the Welsh Cup vs Newtown at Park Hall Stadium.
We split them into smaller groups, and they had match observation sheets in relation to both teams’ game plan, formation and strategy. They then had to present their findings back to the other groups, opening discussion.
It was a really beneficial exercise and I was delighted with some of the answers and level of detail given.
The players challenged each other as well, with input from myself challenging them further, as I threw a few curve balls in.
It’s a beneficial and useful way of developing the thinking footballer, helping to increase their understanding of the game and also for them to have the confidence to present back to a group of people. I was really impressed with the answers.
On Saturday morning, we welcomed Connah’s Quay Nomads to Park Hall Stadium to face our U8-11 age groups, for early morning kick-offs.
Connah’s Quay always have good teams across the board and games against them are always competitive and played the right way.
I was really impressed with our Foundation Phase and seeing how they have developed this season, both individually and collectively as teams. It definitely shows the improvement through our training programme and use of the new Skills Acquisition programme.
The Friday sessions have been extremely beneficial, with the level of coaching very high and detailed. Last week we had 2 UEFA A Licence and 2 UEFA B Licence coaches doing a lot of one-on-one work, focussing on technique.
It’s great to see how much some of the boys have developed this season and it shows in their games.
On Sunday morning, our U13s welcomed Connah’s Quay, for an early morning kick-off. I was delighted with the start from the boys and how they took on pre-match info.
They are extremely receptive and have come on loads this season with their understanding of roles and responsibilities. They’re starting to show a real maturity as well.
Credit to Connah’s Quay, who have some excellent players in this age group. We thank them for the game and look forward to return games in the future.
Our U12/U14/U16s continued their FAW Academy Cup Super6 programmes with away fixtures.
Our U12s made the journey up the Welsh coast to play Llandudno. Our U12s have been in excellent form in past weeks, with some great individual and team moments. They continued this in Sunday’s fixture.
Our U14s travelled to Caernarfon Town. The game was actually played at Treborth playing fields in Bangor, on the impressive new 3G university pitch.
The weather was pretty bad, with a strong wind sweeping across the pitch, affecting both teams. I was impressed with our counter-attacking and resilience shown.
Our U16s were also in action against Llandudno. Despite the weather, the boys were superb. We tinkered with the formation slightly, which gave us good balance and caused Llandudno a few problems.
Llandudno were lively on the counter-attack, breaking with pace. Overall though, it was another good performance.
To finish the day, our U15s also played Connah’s Quay Nomads. Our U15s continued recent fine performances, with a couple of well worked goals against a good Nomads team. We thank them for travelling over to us.
As we conclude, it was a very good week, with some great quality fixtures and some really good football played. It challenged the players in a variety of ways. Developing the person as well as the player is something we pride ourselves on at The New Saints FC.
We look forward to another busy week and hopefully brighter skies as we head into March.
