AFC Telford boss set for meetings to make ties with Wolves
AFC Telford boss Steve Kittrick is set to meet Wolves boss Kenny Jackett as part of a plan to develop closer ties with the Championship club in the future.
Kittrick is keen to establish better links with the region's higher-league sides to help improve his team's playing squad in the long term.
And the Bucks chief said: "I am in contact with Wolves, as well as Birmingham City, and I have been invited next Thursday to go down to Wolves to meet the first team manager and have a look at what we can do going forward.
"I think it is silly that we have got a club that close and we don't use it.
"If we have links with clubs that can offer something to us and loan us players for long term I think that is the way forward."
Telford have also arranged a friendly against Wolves U21s this Tuesday.
The match, which will kick-off at 7pm, is the second such friendly arranged by Kittrick in recent weeks.
Earlier this week Telford had been due to host Birmingham City's U21s in a friendly clash but the game had to be postponed because of a frozen pitch.
Kittrick had planned to cast an eye over the Blues' squad to identify possible loan targets, and Tuesday's match against Wolves may present a similar opportunity.
The Telford manager, who arrived in December, has made no secret of his desire to improve recruitment from within the local area and he plans to bring in a head scout in the coming months to help identify more talented players from the Midlands area.
And managing director Lee Carter has also revealed that the Bucks are also keen to expand their youth system in the near future.
The club currently operates a youth system from U8-U16 level, but Carter, who was speaking at at fans forum at the New Bucks Head, said: "Next year we are looking to develop our own scholarship programme.
"That will be based here as well and we are just on the cusp of putting in a proposal to Telford & Wrekin Council to extend this centre so we can host that kind of scholarship programme and one or two other things."
Longer term, he added that the club would like to establish a new training centre which could be used by both the first team and youth teams.
He said: "We are talking with the council and other partners, the Shropshire FA, about a training centre in the South of the Town which will have some artificial pitches and grass pitches, a coach education centre, classrooms to teach young people in, changing rooms and a social area."
But he added: "At the moment they are nothing more than proposals."
