A new partnership between Renton Craigandro and Dumbarton Football Club will benefit both clubs, according to those involved in the agreement.
Yesterday the Sons formally announced their connection with one of the area’s biggest grassroots football clubs, which will see both working together to provide a pathway for local youngsters into senior football.
Craigandro currently have over 300 players from age five to 15 at the club, with the partnership giving players at the Tontine side the chance to impress Sons’ boss Stevie Farrell.
Each month a player, or players, from Renton’s oldest age group who have impressed coaches will be invited to train with the Sons’ first team - experiencing the demands of a professional training session first
hand.
A similar agreement with Dumbarton United saw 16-year-old goalkeeper Michael Carr impress previous boss Jim Duffy, earning a place on the bench for first-team games.
And Renton vice-chairman Joe Mulvenna revealed that a conversation with Dumbarton associate director Andy Gordon sparked the idea.
Joe told the Lennox: “Myself and Andy were chatting one day, and I said ‘why am I sending all this local talent to clubs outwith the area? Surely we should be looking at harnessing some of it’.
“Rather than concentrating on eight, nine and 10-year-olds who we see taken when they are young by Celtic and Rangers, kept for a few years and then spat out, disillusioned with football, let’s allow the boys a chance to develop and give them an opportunity at an older age.
“They are 12 or 13 and have been told they are not good enough. It really brings them down.
“This partnership means that, when our boys are 15, there will be three or four maybe identified - possibly more - who will have the opportunity to go and train with Dumbarton.
“If they are good enough they would then be taken onboard by Dumbarton.
“It gives young kids something to aspire to. They’ll know if they are good enough then they will have the opportunity to play for their local team.
“For our older age groups it gives them something to drive towards.
“Not everyone will be picked up by Celtic or Rangers. They might not be good enough for them but they might be good enough for Dumbarton.”
As well as providing youngsters with an opportunity of impressing the Sons boss, the partnership will also see all of Craigandro’s 300 kids given free tickets for Dumbarton matches - something that Joe believes will help grow the Castle Road club’s future support.
He continued: “If our club is tied in with Dumbarton then our kids may become future supporters of Dumbarton. The benefit that Dumbarton gets from having a connection with us is twofold.
“They get the pick of our talent, but also they have 300 potential supporters - and that number is growing every year.
“From our perspective there is no negative. We, as a club, are well established, we’ve been going since 1963 and we have been approached by quite a few junior teams to do this.
“But we always held back because we felt we could aspire to be a bit better than that.
“Things aligned with Dumbarton, we had the conversation and we seem to be on the same page with how we want to progress kids and Dumbarton.
“The benefits really are going both ways.”
