The best young male and female football talent from across Northern NSW converged at Armidale on the weekend for the 2017 Telstra Skill Acquisition Program (SAP) Country Gala Days.
Over 400 players aged 10 years to 14 years, making up over 33 teams, participated in over 100 games across the weekend at the University of New England (UNE), Armidale.
Teams from the North Coast, Mid North Coast, Newcastle, Macquarie and hosts Northern Inland participated.
The games across the weekend were development based for players that provided the opportunity for Technical Directors to assess players following their pre-season training program.
Technical Directors (TD) that attended, included, Howard Stubbs from Northern Inland Football, Gary McGinnis from North Coast Football and Scott Townsend from Northern NSW Newcastle SAP.
Northern Inland Football TD, Howard Stubbs, said it was a good hit out for the country clubs on the weekend.
“It was a good opportunity for our coaches to see where we were at and where the players are at as well,” Stubbs said.
“I think everyone is happy with what they saw and I especially was really happy with our squads across the weekend.”
“On Saturday we were a little bit behind but on Sunday I was really pleased with how everyone pushed through.”
“We want to see improvement again in each Gala Day we go into. It’s pleasing to have new players in our squad so we definitely want to see them improving,” Stubbs concluded.
The second Telstra SAP Country Gala Day will be conducted at Coffs Harbour on Saturday 25th and 26th March 2017.
Hunter Valley Football, the Emerging Jets and the three licensed Country SAP Country Zones will all be involved on that weekend.
The Telstra SAP Metropolitan program will commence from this upcoming weekend for Hunter Region based teams.
The draw can be found here.
