GLOUCESTER CITY AFC PRESS RELEASE

From: Gloucester City Football Club

Date: 28 March 2007

TITLE: CITY YOUTH SIGN COACH WILLETTS

Gloucester City have made a further significant signing on their Youth Development Scheme coaching staff. Kevin Willetts, until recently a coach within Cheltenham Towns Youth setup has signed up to coach the Under-15s side next season. This is a new team for City as they seek to develop their youth programme, and provides a clear route from Under-12 all the way to the Under-18s team which has fed so much talent through to the first team in recent years.
Gloucester-based Willetts is excited by the challenge; "I have wanted to coach older kids for a while now, and also felt that I had probably reached a parting of the ways at Cheltenham. Having resigned from there a couple of months ago, I recently got talking with Kenny Blackburn, and very quickly agreed to come on board. I guess my style is to concentrate on the skills - you can run all you want, and of course fitness is important, but your ball skills are the most vital part of your game. At this level winning is nice, but the real prize for me is passing on players to the next age bracket who have improved in their time with me.
Willetts enjoyed a very successful playing career, and although he played one season for City he is best known for his times at Cheltenham Town and Kidderminster Harriers. "Having had a long spell at Cheltenham I joined City for a season, but things didn't quite work out, and I was actually thinking of retiring when the opportunity to go to Kidderminster came up. I thought I would be filling in here and their, and warming the bench, but went straight into the first team and stayed their for 5 years, eventually retiring in my late thirties. Although I have had experience of management at the adult level (Kevin was assistant to Brian Hughes at Witney and Cirencester), I want to concentrate on training younger players, that is where I want to be, and Gloucester City are developing into a really excellent set-up across the age brackets, so I am extremely excited to be coming on board.


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