It's been a brilliant start to the season by our Acdemy scholars and with a long injury list for our first team it has allowed our scholars to prove themselves at step three football! In recent weeks, Joe Uveges, Dameer Rose, Saikou Brown and Luca Burton have all made first team appearances with Joe scoring two fantastic goals on his debut away to Gainsborough Trinity.

First Team Manager Martin Carruthers has also been extremely thankful and grateful to Richard Cooper, Academy Manager of Mansfield Town FC for the kind gesture of 3 Mansfield town Scholars as loanees at this time. Taylor Anderson and McKeal Abdullah have featured regularly and are doing very well with Taylor picking up our player of the month award for October! Unfortunately, Darien Wauchoupe suffered an injury on his first training session with the Ambers so remains on the sidelines.

In what has been a tradition over many years of our academy and prospects making the step up it has been key this season with the Ambers first team totally decimated by injuries. At its worst in recent weeks, Martin Carruthers first team have suffered injuries of staggering numbers, with all 11 established first team players missing the recent FA Trophy victory against Hanley Town. The situation hasn't really improved recently, and for Saturday's defeat away to Warrington Rylands the injury absence list was still at 6 with a further 4 forced to participate at less than 100%. The situation shows no sign of improvement with Ethan Stewart reaggravating his recent injury that forced him to miss 6 weeks.

It is a been an immense measure of achievement that we have accumulated points under this injury scenario and progress in the FA Trophy facing a big second round tie a week on Saturday away to National League South side St Albans City. With a lot of midweek fixtures commencing from mid November Martin Carruthers can only hope that the squad will slowly make returns in the coming weeks, but with adversity continues to bring opportunities for our youngsters.

Under the leadership of coaches Andrew Danylyszyn, David Boafo and Rob Lill our three academy sides are having excellent seasons with the U19s sitting top of the National League, Our U18s Midland Youth League side are also sitting top of the table after a 1-0 win over former league leaders Racing Club Warwick and our SCL U17s are currently 3rd in their respective division.

So outside the local professional teams the Basford United Football Academy remains an attractive location and pathway for exciting U16 year old prospects keen for a good education and opportunities to play and progress at high level Academy and Semi Professional football.

To request a trial for the academy, please email: Academy@BasfordUnitedFC.com