Gillingham Football Club, along with the majority of other Football League Clubs, run a Centre of Excellence designed to produce full time trainees ("scholars") and ultimately professional players for the clubs first team.

The majority of the Centre of Excellence programme is based at the excellent facilities at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Our different age groups, which run from Under 9s to Under 16s, train twice a week, and our younger teams (U9s-U14s) play their Sunday fixtures at the University. Our U16s train once a week at Canterbury, and once a week during the daytime at Beechings Cross, if their school allow.The Under 16s Saturday fixtures are also at Beechings, normally when the Youth Team are away.

All of our age groups are in a 'games programme' competing against other Centres from such clubs as Brighton, Millwall, Colchester and Southend as well as some more geographically distant ones such as Northampton and Peterborough.No points are at stake in these fixtures, "roll-on-roll-off" substitutions are allowed, and, up until the Under 16 age group each player must play a minimum of 2/3 of a match. This is all designed to encourage the development of players, rather than sole focus on the result.This is not to say the games are uncompetitive, as they most certainly are!

During their games no parental involvement is allowed, with most coaching input coming in the breaks of play. Our U9s and U10s play 8v8 (although there is a move to reduce this to 4v4 by some clubs) and our U11s 9v9.Periods of play are normally 60 minutes broken into 3 or 4 periods. From U12s up to U14s it moves to 3 x 25 minute periods on smaller size 11v11 pitches, while at U15/U16 level full sized pitches are used and two halves played.

During the season we will be giving you more details on each of the age groups and the type of things they do in training, what we look for in a footballer and hopefully other areas you might find of interest.

Over the last few years the likes of Andrew Crofts, Matty Jarvis, Nyron Nosworthy, Danny Spiller, Charlie Howard, Andrew Pugh, Craig Stone and Luke Freeman have gone from the youth system into the first team.

Luke Freeman (now with Arsenal) and Ryan Bertrand (who moved to Chelsea when aged 16) have since gone onto represent England at various age groups. Clearly not everyone in our programme can reach these heights, but undoubtedly we have the potential for some to follow in the footsteps of those named above.It is our job to nurture them and ensure they have the best possible opportunity.