Premier League Primary Football Festival

Drapers’ Academy are delighted to have co-organised and hosted the Premier League Primary Football Festival (Havering & Essex) this term.

The event took place on Drapers’ Academy’s three football pitches. Teams of Year 5 and Year 6 pupils from various Havering primary schools attended, to play a tournament in front of official scouts from Tottenham Hotspur FC and West Ham United FC.

Year 5 and Year 6 pupils from the following nine schools took part in the football festival: Drapers’ Pyrgo Priory School, Drapers’ Maylands Primary School, Holly Trees Primary School, Clockhouse Primary School, The Mawney Foundation School, Harold Wood Primary School, Harold Court Primary School, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School and St Ursula’s Catholic Primary Schools.

This is the second year that Drapers’ Academy have hosted this event, following its successful launch last summer. It allows many young footballers the chance of a lifetime to play in front of a Premier League scout and have the opportunity to begin their footballing dream.

Format of the Festival

All teams played a minimum of four 15 minute games in a group format. The winners from each group (Harold Wood and St Ursula’s) then met in a final, with Harold Wood winning the overall festival.

To finish, a ‘showcase’ match took place. This allowed the scouts from Tottenham and West Ham to select the most promising individual players from each school to create two ‘super teams’ of ten players. This special part of the event allowed players from different schools to play alongside each other, and demonstrate their skills. The players who were not selected cheered on their classmates from the touchline, creating a special community atmosphere.

As a result of this year’s festival, seven young players have now been invited to the Tottenham Hotspur training ground to take part in a showcase event, representing Havering. A further three players have also been offered a trial at Southend United, six have been invited into West Ham United’s Emerging Hammers Programme, and one player instantly earned a six-week trial with West Ham Academy.

Mr Singh, PE teacher at Drapers’ Academy, organised the event and said: “We work very hard at Drapers’ Academy to provide these unique experiences for our pupils, as well as others from our local primary schools. Next year we aim to make the festival even bigger, opening up this amazing opportunity to even more primary school pupils.  We will be running our annual Year 3 and 4 festival in the near future and look forward to sharing more success stories from that event.”