Half Way Stage In Our First Season Of The Junior Premier League

Firstly wishing all PJSS staff, coaches, parents and players a Happy New Year, hoping you all enjoyed the Christmas period.

Just over 12 months ago PJSS Academy established to create an environment where young and potentially ELITE players can come, develop and most importantly play football with a smile on their face and not worry about the fear of making mistakes – after all what chance does a player have of developing if football becomes unenjoyable!

In this short time we have grown 3 development centres, built our own Indoor 3G Training Centre, and have almost 250 players attending sessions with us on a weekly basis.

Further more we have entered six squads from U10 – U16 into the Junior Premier League. This being a platform where we felt players who were excelling at ‘Grass Roots’ but not quite making the standard of ‘Professional Academies’ needed to be allowed to develop accordingly so that the bridge between ‘Grass Roots’ and ‘Professional Academies’ could be come achievable over time – something Wales were unable to provide us and ultimately the decisive factor with us affiliating to the English Fa.

So in May the preparations started and to say delivering this was a task is quite and understatement…. and the weekly struggles and organisation involved – well sometime the less said the better!

Almost 100 international clearances were required, our match kit still not arriving the day before the first game, Beachley Army Barracks having to re-home us after 1 month (big thanks to Major Rod Poulter for doing so), moving to Wydean School where unfortunately having our goals vandalised, all obstacles we have had to over come during this first half of the season – but what doesn’t kill us certainly makes us stronger from it.

But and is a big but and certainly makes it all worth while, is seeing what this platform we are on has produced for our squads. Every squad we built for the JPL was effectively from scratch, some players not knowing each other until day one of training, and now 4/5 months into the season, the squads are gelling nicely the progression has been second to none – and whilst development throughout the season is what we aim to provide, winning clearly breeds confidence, a confidence for a player to express themselves more.

Already we can see signs of improvement that some players could make the step up into ‘Professional Academies’ and are being watched. 2 of our players gaining trials at a Championship Club, one making the Junior Premier League representative team for the season. A great testament for themselves and also to the coaches we have on board here at PJSS.

A second half of the season very much to look forward too, but a big thank you to everyone involved with PJSS Academy, the coaches, the scouts, the players and to the parents, without you and your commitment, we would be unable to continue to move forward in the direction we are going.

Many Thanks

Paul Parry