Release Date: 12/12/2011

THE cream of Northern Ireland’s young elite footballers have been pitting their skills against each other at the Irish FA’s County Excellence Programme festival days.

In the first of a series of events, under-14 teams from each of the counties met at the Dub in Belfast, providing the Irish FA’s excellence coaches the opportunity to assess their squads’ development against the best players that Northern Ireland has to offer.

The role of the Irish FA Centres of Excellence is to support young players aged 11-15 with the aim of developing the best young players in the country.  Not only do the coaches help and support these young players with their footballing skills but also with their conditioning, diet and general lifestyle.  The Centres of Excellence are a vital strand of the Association’s Grassroots Strategy.

Raymond Alexander, County Down Excellence Coach, was delighted with the standard of football on display across all of the teams at the under-14 Festival day.  “Today we have been looking at the future stars of football in Northern Ireland at both international and domestic level and there are some great prospects coming through.  These players are only a few years away from representing Northern Ireland at under-16 level which will hopefully be the start of a long international career for some of them” said Raymond.

The Mid-Ulster Sports Arena was the venue for the under-15 festival day with players looking to catch the eye of the Excellence coaches and the numerous scouts who had made the journey from England and Scotland. Paul Kee, County Tyrone Excellence Coach stressed the potential importance of the Festival days to the careers of local young footballers.

"These players are at an age now when they are starting to look at taking their game to the next level” said Kee, also Northern Ireland’s under-17 manager. “The Festival day provides them with the opportunity to play against the best footballers in the country, and the interest that this Festival Day has attracted from many professional football clubs shows the players that they are very close to perhaps making the move to England or Scotland to pursue a career in the game.  The importance of good quality coaching during the early teenage years cannot be underestimated, and these young players are reaping the benefits of this” continued Kee.

For more information on the Irish FA’s Centres of Excellence and Grassroots football, go to www.irishfa.com/grassroots or call 02890 669559.

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