Swindon Town

EARLIER this week, Swindon Town's 2001 Academy age group left The County Ground for their training base in Dordrecht in The Netherlands for the Gravenzande tournament over the weekend of 23/24th, writes Jeremy Newton.

This will see Swindon play against Schalke from Germany in their opening game, then Dutch giants Feyenoord and then end the group games against Brommapojkarna from Sweden. Others teams in the other groups include Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, Salzburg, PSV Eindhoven, Genk, Den Haag and AZ Alkmaar. The players and staff have the first team coach with them over the next few days which enables the players to feel like the first team. Manager Mark Cooper also climbed on board before we left to wish the players all the best and express his thoughts for the tournament ahead.

The players arrived last night before settling in for a debrief with the staff before turning in for the night. This morning after breakfast, we trained at our base in Dordrecht before we returned for lunch. The players have some down time this afternoon before training again where they will play pool, table tennis, and I have allowed a games console to come away with us that the players and the staff can use! This evening we will take the players bowling and for something to eat before an early night before the official tournament games start tomorrow.

The players and the staff are very much looking forward to playing against the teams mentioned and viewing other clubs, as well as learning from them, building links with them and playing against clubs that we haven't faced before.