Good afternoon everybody and welcome back to Carrow Road for today's match against Sheffield United.

Over the past week first year scholar Josh Dawkin has been on international duty with Wales under-17s taking part in the group stages of the UEFA under-17 European Championships.

Wales have been drawn in group G alongside Portugal, Faroe Islands and Kazakhstan with all the matches taking place in Portugal.

The first of the matches took place on Monday against Faroe Islands, this was followed by a game against Kazakhstan on Wednesday and finally Portugal on Saturday. At the time of writing none of the games have taken place, but Josh will be confident of being involved having represented the Welsh under-19 squad earlier in the summer.

I will report fully on Josh's performances in a future programme.

Josh is just one of a number of Academy players who have received recognition at International level recently.

Fellow first year scholar Dario Dumic is currently on duty with Denmark under-17s. This is the fourth time Dario has joined up with his Danish colleagues since signing his scholarship with us in June.

David Stephens also represented Wales under-17s during the summer break when they took part in the Four Nations Tournament against Sweden, Turkey and Norway.

Second year scholar Danny Kelly was recently involved with the Republic of Ireland under-19s following a successful training camp with the squad.

Current under-16 goalkeeper Jed Steer has been called up twice to represent England under-17s this summer. The second of his call-ups this season was for an international tournament against Israel, Italy and Portugal, unfortunately for Jed he was sent home injured before the first game, though I am confident he will receive further call-ups in this age group as the season progresses.

As an Academy we are very proud when any of our players receive recognition at International level, so to have this many players involved at this stage of the season is something we hold in very high regard.

Enjoy the game.

Ricky Martin
Academy Manager