Centre of Excellence hold Annual Information meeting

Gillingham's Centre of Excellence held it's annual Players and Parents Information meeting at the Keynes Lecture Theatre at The University of Kent at Canterbury on Tuesday evening, virtually all of the Clubs 100 registered under 9's to 16's attended with their parents to hear the plans for the coming season

Centre Manager Bryan Bull opened the proceedings by introducing the first speaker, Graham Holmes, Director of Sport and Leisure at the University, who went through a slide show of the Universities impressive looking new Sports Pavilion, building of which commences on Monday.

The building will contain 10 self contained changing rooms, meeting rooms, offices, as well as refreshment facilities and balconies overlooking both grass and artificial pitches. Graham also touched on other planned initiatives such as increases to the strength and conditioning facilities as well as a roof covering the 7 tennis and netball courts currently alongside the artificial pitches.

Bryan himself then took the players and parents through what the coming season holds in terms of the staffing, training and fixtures programme. Youth Team Manager and Director of Youth Mark Patterson then briefly took over to introduce a very nervous looking Connor Essam, (who is a First Year scholar) who described to the audience what it was like to be a full time scholar at the Football Club. Connor received a very warm round of applause for a polished performance.

Finally, Bryan went through a brief description of how the coaching syllabus for the schoolboy players at the Club is designed for someone as young as eight all the way through to the sixteen year old age group, touching on the different balance between technical and tactical practices that is appropriate to each age groups. (Bryan will be describing this in more detail in a future edition of the Gills Match day magazine)