Youth will play a big part for St Cuthbert Wanderers in the new season.
The squad has undergone a huge overhaul for the second summer running after Ian Clark took over from Josh Gardner.
And the changes will see a lot of youngsters make the transition from youth football to the South of Scotland League.
Clark said: “Full rebuilds bring about unique challenges not many people envisage.
“We’re getting the right characters in - we’ve got people who want to be at the club, who are willing to come in to work hard.
“I think we have retained one player from last year. We’ve been brilliant with the support we’ve got from our Colts team.
“At the weekend we had five or six who had either come through the youth academy, played for the Colts or both. When I took the role it was something the club really wanted to push forward with to show the community that pathway was there.
“The most pleasing thing for me is in training and even in games these lads don’t look out of place, which is a testament to the coaches that have brought them through the youth set-up.
“Going from boys football to men’s football can be a bit daunting and we’re trying to bridge that pathway to make it as easy as possible.
“We have them in training with us on a weekly basis. From my experience, the challenge is the dressing room – getting the young lads who have maybe been the top performer in the youths to come into a slightly different environment. It’s down to me and my coaches to make sure that environment is welcoming and not too much of a change for them.”
Saints lost 1-0 to Birchtree on Saturday with a team that included five players from their youth set-up, one from their Colts and also Owen Hall, who has previously played for the first team before spending last season with the Colts.
This weekend Saints are at home again as Kilbowie AFC visit Kirkcudbright.
Clark said: “We want to make sure we’re getting minutes in the legs. The opposition needs to be right as well.
“There’s no productiveness in us going into a game where we’re going to be getting 90 minutes of defending.
“Saturday we were poor first half and the lads know that. What was disappointing was the reaction to going 1-0 down. We got in at half-time, regrouped and refocused, and I made it abundantly clear the reaction needs to be right. We have experienced boys at the back and in the middle, you expect them to take control and settle the lads down.
“In the second half, the lads were brilliant. We made some changes, told them we needed to see the character coming out and if we did that we’d get rewards.
“I think Birchtree would say it was a completely different story. We had a lot of the ball, we maybe just lacked that finesse in the final third.
“We’re only three or weeks into this and relationships need to build. We’ll get there.”
