March 10, 2010 will forever be remembered as the darkest day in the history of senior football in the city. But fast forward almost two years to the day since Chester City died, the club which formed in its wake is thriving. Neil Young’s first team are closing in on a second straight promotion and as PAUL WHEELOCK discovered this week, Chester FC now boasts a blossoming youth and junior section that is already yielding results

LIKE all the best plans, it was hatched in a pub.

But when Mark Howell and Bernard Concannon got together over a drink to discuss setting up a Chester FC youth team, little did they know that within two years there would be not one, but five sides aged 18 and under representing the reborn Blues. Or even that they would so quickly achieve the main aim of their meeting that night at the Wheatsheaf in Upton.

“Me, Bernard and two of the other lads involved sat down and asked what we wanted to achieve,” remembers Howell, who is Chester’s community officer. “And Bernard said ‘we’d love to get a player in the first team in the first three years’.

“Well, we’ve had one already this season start (Joe Ormrod) and two others (Jordan Grace and Sean Miller) play in a competitive game at Hednesford in the Doodson Sport Cup. They may play in a similar competition next season but we will be surprised if they are stretching the first team.

“But within two years you’d want to see them in and around what the first team are doing.”

Concannon, the club’s head of youth development, knows a thing or two about spotting young players with the potential to make the step up into senior football.

The Blues season-ticket holder is a long-serving Manchester United scout who runs a development centre for the defending Premier League champions three nights a week in Chester and Saltney.

He has a vast knowledge of the upcoming talent in the Chester, Wirral and North Wales areas and it is through his top-class contacts that the Blues – and not rivals like Wrexham and Tranmere Rovers as has been the case since the closure of the Chester City Centre of Excellence in 2009 – can benefit in the future.

“Once players come out of United’s youth system you’ll find they end up at places like Stoke or Wigan,” says Concannon, the co-chairman of Newton Athletic Youth FC. “But certainly at younger ages any localised players we would hope to bring on board.

“The further up the league the first team gets the bigger incentive it will be for them to come here – and if they do come here, they will be looked after.”

Concannon and Howell have worked hard to ensure the club’s junior and youth section has the correct volunteer coaches in place.

“The people we’ve brought in are people who we can trust, who care about the club, who will be good with the kids, who have the coaching capabilities, and who will be with us for a long time,” says Howell.

Continuity is the key for Concannon. For example he wants Nick Jones, next season’s under 9s boss, to stay with the new and exciting side until they are 18.

Chester currently operates sides at U10s, U13s and U16s level along with the youth team.

It is a little over a year since the youth team played their first match but their rapid progress since then has surpassed the expectations of their coaches.

The side, which will next season compete in the FA Youth Cup, sit well placed in sixth in the North West Youth Alliance Premier Division and recently reached the semi-final of the Neil Thomason Cup with a stunning 4-0 victory over full-time Morecambe Youth at the Exacta Stadium. Concannon believes the team, who are an U17s side playing in an U18s division, ‘came of age’ during that match.

A number of players from the youth set-up now regularly train with Neil Young’s senior stars.

Blues boss Young is concerned, however, that at the end of next season, when the youth team’s time in the North West Youth Alliance ends, some of the players might not be ready for the physical nature of non-league football.

Loath to release an 18-year-old he feels could go on to play for the first team in time, Young is therefore exploring the possibility of the North West Youth Alliance starting an U21s division which – like the format football takes at the Olympics – would allow three over 23s players to participate in matches.

What definitely will be in place for the start of next season is a Chester reserves side which will play friendlies on a regular basis.

Gareth Richards, the club’s youth development manager, will be charged with the responsibility of arranging fixtures for the reserves.

The former Chester Schoolboys boss and Catholic High School teacher also runs the Blues U16s, who will next season join the North West Youth Alliance First Division and play under the name of Chester FC Colts.

The season after that the Colts will become Chester FC Youth – by which time the likes of Ormrod, Grace and Miller may already have established themselves in the first team.

“That’s the dream,” says Howell.

Chester FC Youth and Chester FC Under 16s will welcome Irish opposition to the Exacta Stadium on Sunday, March 18.

The youth will face St Patrick’s Athletic Youth before the U16s take on Shelbourne U16s. Kick-off times are to be confirmed.