Pennington FC Youth U15's JPL half term report
Posted by Nobody on 4 January 2019
You may remember back a few months ago we reported that our U 15's Youth team had been accepted to enter the Junior Premier League (JPL). Here is a recap of how they got there and a mid term report of their season so far.
Back in September the club took its first tentative steps in the Junior Premier league (JPL) with our Pennington FC Youth Under 15's leading the way. As its name suggests, the league aims to bring the top teams in each age group together with the view to ensure that the players in these teams are sufficiently challenged where they may not be in their local grassroots leagues. As well as some of the top grassroots teams the league also plays host to a number of full time academy sides from the national leagues e.g.. Chester City, Rochdale.
Over the past couple of seasons the players of our current under 15's had successfully won the A section of the Bolton & Bury District Junior League so coaches Andy Whittaker and Gary Darbyshire felt that the time was right to leave local grassroots football behind and compete in the JPL.
The JPL season is split into two phases; Phase 1, which runs from September through to December is a regional league. The Under 15's were placed in the North West region which saw us play fixtures against teams such as Fylde AFC and Squires Gate among others. At the end of the first phase the league placings determine the teams that your team will play in Phase 2 which runs from January through to May e.g.. The teams that finish at the top in each of the regional leagues are brought together to form the elite national league.
Over the past few months coach Andy Whittaker has commented many times on how tough it has been as the standard in the league is extremely high. However, as the weeks went by and the match reports were published the team appeared to be relishing the additional challenge the league provided, putting in some very strong performances and getting some impressive results so much so that at the end of the first phase of fixtures Pennington FC found them sat in second place in the league which meant that there were promoted to the elite national league and are now looking forward to playing teams from the following clubs; Kidderminster Harriers, Worcester City and MK Dons.
As you can appreciate, this is truly a fantastic achievement and the club could not be more proud!
The teams 2019 start this Saturday at our Jubilee Park home where we host Guiseley with a kick off 11am .
