Under-18s back in training ahead of the 2018/19 season
Shrewsbury Town’s Under-18s side have returned for pre-season ahead of the 2018/19 EFL Youth Alliance campaign.
The lads went subject to pre-season testing on Wednesday, before getting the balls out for the first-time on Thursday.
“It was a difficult day for the players given the weather, but they came back in really high spirits”, said Eric.
“The off-season for them and for us feels as though it's gone in the blink of an eye and it feels like only yesterday that we played our last game and said farewell to the second-years.
“Everyone's immensely excited to be back and really looking forward for the pre-season games to start.
“I would imagine that there were a lot of nerves amongst the group today, particularly for the Under-16s that were stepping foot into full-time football for the first time, but everything seemed to go really well.”
This season is a particularly exciting one for the Academy with a high number of talented Under-16s moving into their scholarships and Ramsay is excited by what they could go onto achieve.
“This particular group of first-years over the last two or three years as a schoolboy side have done immensely well”, Eric said.
“We get comments from coaches up and down the country about the quality of last year’s Under-16s group and how they were so disappointed that we took most of them because we were desperate to take the ones that we didn’t take.
“I’m hopeful that that group, in addition to the second-years that we’ve got, that showed a lot of promise last year, sets us up for a really good season at this level.
“It will be up to the players to continue to perform as they have done now that they are Academy players, because being an Under-18 is a different challenge.”