Town’s academy has recruited two more youngsters on two-year scholarships. Central defender Jideofo Maduako and full-back-turned-midfielder Aaron Jones (pictured), both 16, have taken the number of new full-timers starting at Playford Road this season to 10.
Academy recruitment officer Malcolm Moore told TWTD how the club discovered Maduako: "He’s centre-half from Camden. We got him from a private academy called Focus, which is a good little concern which operates in north London.
"Clubs like us can send scouts to the games they put on and one of ours goes there quite a lot and we’ve looked at several players from there. One that we were keen on chose another club, which was understandable because it was a Premiership club.
"Jide came on the scene towards the end of last year. He trained with us and played three matches and in every game he performed steadily better and better.”
Moore says the defender continued to impress at the beginning of this campaign: "We got him back at the start of the season and we’ve offered a two-year scholarship.
"He’s approached it very maturely, he’s a very nice guy, he’s eager to learn, very intelligent - he did very, very well in his GCSEs - he asks questions and he’s got a lot of good things about him.
"He’s about 6ft 4in tall and he likes to attack the ball. He loves a tackle, has a bit of pace and wants to play, but there are areas where he needs to improve. We think there’s a raw talent that we can sharpen up and improve on.”
Yarmouth-born Jones, a full-back who has switched to playing in central midfield, was set to leave the club at the end of last season having been a schoolboy with the Blues, but was offered an additional year and has used that as a springboard to win a longer term stay.
Moore says Jones has taken his chance with both hands: "He looked at one or two clubs at the end of last season but it didn’t work out, so [academy manager] Sammy Morgan decided to take him on as a schoolboy for a year to see if we can work on the areas of his game which need improving.
"Two months into the season and he’s done sufficiently well to convert those one-year schoolboy terms into a two-year scholarship, which is all credit to him.”
Both Jones and Maduako are in the U18 side facing Norwich at their Colney training ground this morning.
You can read about the new scholars who signed in the summer here, while Carel Tiofack and Cody Cropper have also joined more recently.