Parkinson is keen to introduce young players to the first-team environment and Edwards was part of the touring group for recent pre-season games, first in Poland and then against Manchester United in Finland.<\/p>\n
“It’s beneficial for them to be in the dressing room, to listen to the senior players talk and to understand what it’s all about at first-team level,” said Parkinson.<\/p>\n
“The lads who’ve come and trained with us have not looked out of place at all. That’s a credit to the academy and the way they’ve worked with them in the off-season. They can cope with the intensity and handle themselves well.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen players progress and the youngsters now are looking, can they be the next player to be like Max Cleworth, Harry Ash or Aaron James who’s had that taste of first team football.”<\/p>\n
For Edwards, winning the Bob Clark Wrexham AFC academy player of the season award was a “proud moment” for himself and his family.<\/p>\n
He played 44 games last season, including some as captain, as the team enjoyed club’s best run in the FA Youth Cup, including a fifth round tie against holders Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
“It was a great season and after Christmas, I felt I pushed on quite well,” said Edwards, a former pupil at Ysgol Brynhyfryd in his hometown of Ruthin.<\/p>\n
“I was captain in a few games and that just comes with experience. We’ve got a great group of lads who are willing to work for each other.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully I can push on even more now. I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my career.”<\/p>\n
Since Reynolds and Mac’s takeover in 2021, the club have invested heavily in an academy training facility at Darland High School in Rossett, a village north of Wrexham.<\/p>\n
Parkinson says having the right facilities and coaching set-up is vital for the club to produce homegrown players.<\/p>\n
“Behind the scenes the standard of the players at the academy is improving each year,” Parkinson added.<\/p>\n
“It needs to because we’ve progressed through the divisions. But right from the outset it was a huge opportunity because you almost started with a blank canvas.<\/p>\n
“People may not be aware of the Darland project where the pitches are a really good standard, changing facilities and a gym for the academy players.<\/p>\n
“All of a sudden it’s easier to attract those better quality players which ultimately we’re going to need as we keep progressing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parkinson is keen to introduce young players to the first-team environment and Edwards was part of the touring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-546189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}