AFC Wimbledon

Academy Manager Michael Hamilton discusses another productive month.

You can read his full update below:

Homegrown and Hungry

November saw 15-year-old Justin Clarke became the youngest player in the Club’s history to feature for the first-team, when he came on in the closing stages of the Bristol Street Motors Trophy game against Wycombe Wanderers.

What his debut and age shows is this club’s undoubted commitment to youth development but what’s often missed in these stories is the journey behind the debut.

From a club perspective, there’s three stages of a player’s journey:

1) Identification: For this we need to highlight our talent ID department that is led by Ben Fosuhene.

2) Development: Since he has been in, he has worked with a few coaches but Hasib Saed and Jack Matthews deserve huge recognition for the role they have played in stretching and challenging Justin to keep improving.

3) Opportunity: His goal in the FA Youth Cup and first-team debut are evidence of the opportunities he’s been afforded.

Bringing this all together is important but above all you need to have hard work and commitment from the player themselves.

As I said to Justin afterwards, his debut is a new milestone in his journey but he hasn’t ‘made it’, if anything the hard work needs to be stepped up now and hopefully this experience has given him a little dose of what’s possible at this great club.

Under-17s win the league

We have been declared winners of the Under-16/17s Competitive League, with one game to spare.

At the beginning of the season all clubs in our category have the option of having their results processed as competitive (count towards the league) or non-competitive (games will be deemed as ‘friendlies’), with many opting to not have their results published as competitive.

We commit to the competition as we feel the competitive element of these games help prepare the players for not only careers in football, but also the realities of what ‘success’ looks like.

*Our last game of the competitive league is against Gillingham.

Under-16/17s squad:  

Harry Hedges, Jack McGibbon, Eterne Djedje, Calum Mathieson, Amaari Sealey, Alessandro Verderame, Fabian Prela, Lucas Green, Kiayon Moore, Sam Goma-Weinberg, Freddie Phelan, Tom Carvalho-Norris, Justin Clarke, Stanley Williamson, George Upsdell, Shaun Soukou, Connor Harris, Ethan McGrath, Riley Horan, Bailey Cotton, Kevin Kargbo, Kai Mckenzie, Jake Lawrence, Junior Nkeng

Under-18 Premier League Professional Development Cup

This season for the first time ever, we qualified for the Under-18s Premier League Cup, qualifying after finishing runners-up in last season’s EFL Merit 1 League, but despite winning our last group game vs QPR, we exited the competition.

This competition kicked off back in September and being the only Category 3 academy in the group, meant it was a great opportunity to test ourselves.

Academy Manager, Michael Hamilton, said: ‘’The fact you only played teams once and only the winner progressed meant it was going to be an exciting challenge and going into games, we really embraced being the underdog.

“Whist it’s frustrating to be knocked out, hopefully the experience is one we end up learning from for the future.

“For example, in the Charlton game, we led 2-1 with 25 minutes to go, and then again 3-2 with about 15 left. A few individuals errors then got punished and we ended up losing 4-3. Often in victory its harder to see where you could have been better, so its these experiences and losses that will hopefully enable us to be better in the future.”

PICS: Stephen Flynn (Pro Sports Images)