Town’s U17s finished seventh at the Voskescup tournament which was hosted by Belgian club SC Lokeren this weekend. Midfielder Byron Lawrence, who made his senior debut on the final day of the 2011/12 campaign, top scored for the Blues with four goals.
After ending Saturday joint-second in their group having been unbeaten after one win and two draws, the young Blues completed their group games with a 1-1 draw with AA Gent this morning, Lawrence scoring from the penalty spot.
They needed to beat eventual winners K Sint Truidense to reach the final but lost 2-1 - Lawrence again netting - and ended up fourth in their group of five.
Goals from Lawrence, Sam Ford and Ed Ellis saw the Blues to a 3-1 play-off victory over Sporting de Charleroi to take seventh place overall.
Academy coach Jason Dozzell, who travelled with the squad, told TWTD that the young Blues would have been in with a decent shout of winning the competition had they won their last group match: "We’d have been in the final if we’d have won our final group game. It was all we needed to do.
"We were 1-0 up after about 30 seconds and I thought ‘here we go’, but we got beaten 2-1 in the end. We had chances, it was one of those tournaments where if we’d taken our chances we would have won.
"Sint Truidense beat us to go into the final and they went on and won it quite comfortably 4-0 [against Beerschot AC].”
Overall, he felt the young Blues could be proud of the way they performed: "They did very well, we were the youngest side there, we had 15-year-olds and it was an under-17 tournament. We just lacked a little cutting edge up front, but they come out of it with a lot of credit.”
Meanwhile, academy schoolboy Cemal Ramadan was in the Irish U16 side which beat Germany 1-0 at a UEFA development tournament in Dublin earlier today.
Shane McLoughlin, like Ramadan a striker who is set to join the academy as a full-time scholar this summer, is also in the squad. Ireland face Romania tomorrow and Belgium on Wednesday.
U17s: Jacob Marsden, Sam McDermid, Josh Emmanuel, Joe Robinson, George Fowler, Travis Cole, Matthew Clarke, Chris Smith, Ed Ellis, Jack Willbye, Kundai Benyu, Josh Fagbohan, George Clarke Andre Dozzell, Byron Lawrence, Ted Bishop, Jonathan Smith, Sam Ford.