PLAYERS from some of Scotland’s leading youth academies got their kicks with Rosyth during the October break thanks to free training sessions.

Rosyth Football Club Youth, together with Box Soccer Fife, stepped in to offer coaching to Fife-based youngsters from clubs such as Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, Hearts, Dundee United and Hutchison Vale as COVID-19 restrictions in other health boards prevented them from training with their club or academy.

Last year, Rosyth had organised an October sports camp - which was also put on without charge - in which more than 100 kids tried sports including football, tennis, cricket and unihoc, a type of floor hockey, at the Fleet Grounds.

With the pandemic having put plans for a repeat on the back burner, club chairman Barry Paterson organised the football sessions as a means of “giving something back”, and was delighted with the response.

He explained: “I do the bookings for the Fleet Grounds as well and I got teams that had players who live in Fife, who play in Edinburgh, getting in contact and trying to get a slot during the day to give them a bit of coaching,

“I also have a lot of friends whose kids are at various football academies – whether it be Hibs, Dundee United, Hearts, and we’ve got a couple at Celtic and one at Rangers.

“They can’t train at their academies; some academies are closed down, other ones are restricting people travelling into other local authority areas, so on the back of that, at the club, we thought it would be a decent thing to do to put a training session on for the kids who are missing out, and to keep them ticking over so they’re ready to play when they go back to their boys club or when they go back to their academy.

“I use Box Soccer for some of my teams’ training so I’m really close friends with the guy who runs the franchise in Fife. I asked them to get involved, and the guys came down and done a session.

“It’s been really well received from the boys clubs; a lot of them have been in contact and thanking us for looking after their players.

“We have had kids going through academies, and we have a lot of local kids who have went through them, or are still within the academies. It was basically to give something back, to say we can still train, and we’ve still got access to facilities, so lets use them to help.”