Crawley Town Community Foundation Academy teams ready for new season

They will be competing in the South Premier Division for the first time ever after their promotion, whilst the South Reserves runners-up side begin their campaign next Friday.

The team have been training together for the last few weeks at the Foundation’s education partner – The Holy Trinity School, Crawley – and have been working through the fundamentals and style the coaching team are looking to implement.

​Assistant coach Adam Djellab talked about the work the programme had been doing in the preseason schedule and the success of the new players joining the Education Academy.

​He said: “Everyone is gelling well, it’s always good to see during pre-season their personalities come out a bit more.

"Sometimes, we test them a bit to see what they give back; and even between themselves it’s good – we can see that they are becoming friends, which is what we want to see.

​”Our hopes over the next couple of games is to really implement our style and get used to that.

"We want to keep the ball, we want to be able to create good quality attacks by having possession, and so if we can have the confidence to do that in the games that’ll be good for the team.”

​New goalkeeper Will Heater agrees with his coach and is full of confidence in the team’s chances of success.

​He said: “I feel like everyone is getting on well, everyone knows each other’s names which is important when you’re playing together week-in, week-out.

"The coaches are helping us a lot and I feel as though we are a very strong team and we can do well this season.

"My aims are to win as many games as possible, keep as many clean sheets as possible, and hopefully go on to win the league.”

​The final pre-season game takes place this afternoon (September 6) against Aldershot Town Academy.

The first league game against Barnet and Southgate College Tottenham Hotspur, away from home, is on September 13.

The South Reserves League team face QPR College Red on September 15.

n Crawley Town Community Foundation’s vision is to positively change lives through sport and football. Its mission is to use the power of sport and football to engage, inspire and empower people. Working with participants and the community, together with local, regional and national partners, the foundation aims to positively change lives and support people in health and wellbeing, sports participation, equalities and inclusion, education, enterprise, employment and skills, regeneration and community safety.

Visit www.ctcommunityfoundation.com or find the Foundation on Twitter @crawleytowncf, Instagram @crawleytowncf, or Facebook @ctcommunityfoundation