As the month of March approaches, we are only weeks away from our Development Centre starting in earnest. We had initially intended that 'invitational sessions' would begin from Monday 23 March from 6-7pm at Treborth 4G. However, we have postponed the start of these sessions due to the current Coronavirus situation.

The 'invitational sessions' will be open to children of all ages and ability and our initial plan was to run them every Monday until the end of May. However, as we hope you will appreciate, we may have to review these plans in the light how the current Coronavirus situation evolves.

Please could parents and players arrive in good time so we can take everyone's details and issue a letter outlining all our plans and all the information you require. The sessions will run until the end of May, and cost £3 per session. They will enable us to understand the age groups we can form. This will then mean that we can allocate the coaches we have recruited to specific age groups.

Our hub will be at the new 4G pitch being built at Plas Ffrancon, Bethesda with Bangor University’s Canolfan Brailsford kindly supporting us when necessary by making available their facilities and those at Treborth when required. We would like to express our thanks to Richard Bennett and Sam Wallwork from Bangor University for their continued assistance.

From 23rd July onwards, the Development Centre sessions will take place on Thursdays evenings between 6-8pm. We have decided on Thursday as we believe it's the evening that is least likely to clash with the training nights of local grassroots clubs.

We are aware that local grassroots clubs have recently been told that playing even friendlies against Bangor 1876 junior teams is not permitted, and that they face sanction if they don't abide by this. We would like to point out that is actually precisely what we wanted for our Development Centre. We intend to continue this strategy until it is possible to develop further into an accredited academy.

Our message to the public is that we are not trying to work against local grassroots teams and be 'elitist.' Instead, what we want to do is to work with local grassroots teams.

Our present under-10s team run by Mathew Roberts and Alec Thomas are still classed as a junior team that is part of the Gwyrfai League, and will still be permitted to play against grassroots teams as it counts as a grassroots club itself.

We have so far recruited sixteen coaches for the Development Centre and are delighted that this includes five of our first team squad.​ The full list of coaches will be announced in due course. Dafydd Evans of the Women's / Girls’ section has been a great help in pushing current developments and will also play a valuable role.

In addition, we have had conversations with many sponsors about kits required for the teams. The 'Evening with James Collins' has provided us with base funding which will allow us to buy all proposed age groups all the equipment they require. We would like to thank everyone who supported this event: you really have made a big difference to us and we are tremendously grateful.

Our mission as a club and long term goal is to create a pathway that will enable young aspiring talent to progress all the way to first team level, and we are grateful to our first team coaching staff for their support. In the long term, we aspire to turn this youth structure into one of the best, if not the best, in Welsh domestic football.