PRE-SEASON: Development Team set for friendly fixtures
Our Development Team are set for eight pre-season friendlies to prepare for their new campaign.
The youthful Reds side will enter the local county league this term and are set to face a flurry of tests over the next couple of months.
Reds’ Development Team schedule: (kick-offs TBC)
- Internal game – Saturday, August 1
- Workington Juniors (Whites) [H] – Saturday, August 8
- Cockermouth FC [A] – Saturday, August 15
- Windscale FC [H] – Saturday, August 22
- Kirkoswald FC [A] – Saturday, September 5
- Bootle AFC [A] – Saturday, September 12
- Aspatria FC [A] – Saturday, September 19
- Gosforth AFC [H] – Saturday, September 26
- Country league begins – Saturday, October 3
Manager Brain Dawson has been taking sessions along with senior midfielder Ceiran Casson, assistant Craig Johnston and assistant first-team manager Steven Rudd.
On the fixtures, Dawson said: “We’re starting our pre-season with an internal game at the Copeland Athletics Stadium on Saturday to give us the opportunity to look at the boys in a game situation before we start our pre season fixtures.
“Initially, we pencilled in friendlies every Saturday and Wednesday throughout August but since then we have been given a start date of October 3 by the league.
“With this in mind we have revised our schedule to predominately play Saturdays ensuring we don’t have a 20 plus game pre-season.
“This will allow us to train once a week meaning the lads who don’t get much game time will at least have the opportunity to training weekly.
“Once the season starts we need to make sure we can provide these boys will the right balance of game time and training to ensure we keep them at the club.
“We feel we have assembled a fantastic young and hungry group that will benefit from a better game programme in what will be our first season in the County League.
“With basically a U18 team we understand that there will be some tough physical games but believe this will help them develop long term.
“The objective is to have these boys knocking on Danny’s door for first team opportunities, we had 10 debutants from the reserves last season and if we can get somewhere near that again this season it would be fantastic!”
The matches will be subject to COVID-19 risk assessments.
