Hednesford Town are delighted to announce the appointment of Andy Turner as Head of Youth Development.
Andy, a UEFA A qualified coach, boasts an impressive CV from his professional playing days starting with being part of the FA National school at Lilleshall and counting Tottenham Hotspur, Portsmouth, Crystal Palace, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Rotherham as his former clubs and also holding the record of the 6th Youngest Premier League Scorer. He also represented England Schoolboys, England U15’s-U18’s and then the Republic of Ireland U21’s and being in the full squad 3 times.
After Andy hung up his boots, he moved into a player coach role at Chasetown and was instrumental in setting up the Scholarship and full time education programme at the club. Andy was part of the club for 8 years before stepping into management with Alsager Town and then Romulus where again he led the development of the Scholarship programme.
He then held academy coach roles at Wolverhampton Wanderers, Nottingham Forest and Port Vale.
In 2019, Andy made the journey to Asia where he was national lead academy coach for the Bangladeshi national team and also managed the U19 national side during his tenure there.
Covid then hit bringing his time in Bangladesh to a premature end and he made the move into the Welsh premier league where he was head of coaching at Cefn Druids and also take charge of the first team.
A move to Stafford Rangers followed where he led the Scholarship and Elite pathway programme with huge success before he made the move to Keys Park to take up the role of Head of Youth Development.
Director of Football Andrew Reed added ‘ Andy comes into us with a wealth of experience, and is a great asset to the club. From where the club has been to where we are trying to take it, the development of youth football and football outside of the first team is imperative.
I’m hoping Andy will be able to bring everything back under one roof and we can start developing Hednesford Town players of the future and bring football that is accessible to everyone back to the tremendous community.’
Andy Turner himself had the following to say ‘ I am thrilled to be here at Hednesford Town and the opportunity to join this great club was too good an opportunity to turn down. I am excited to be working alongside all the staff here and the new owners and its been a very productive start to my reign here. We are very close to agreeing an education provider for the new scholarship programme and we have created a development squad in a short space of time who have settled incredibly well and we are well staffed within the group.
I’m exceptionally excited to be creating a new pathway here at Keys Park which will form the foundations of the club and really hone in on the importance of youth here. There have been lots of positive meetings with various people wanting to promote the importance of this side of the club and I am looking forward to the future’
Welcome to Hednesford Andy!
