Lions Talent Pathway augurs well for future!

11 December 2023

Young Lions to make history!

The Swinton Lions LTP (Lions Talent Pathway) Under 16s and Under 18s completed their preparations for 2023 last Saturday with fantastic high quality training delivered in some of the most inclement weather seen this year. The session took place at the excellent facilities of Wright Robinson Sports College in Manchester.

The Under 18s will now finish the year with a game against Leigh Leopards next Saturday (2.30pm kick-off at Leigh East ARLFC), whilst the Under 16s will be playing Leigh and Rochdale respectively in January.

Damian Ridpath, the Lions’ Director of Development, said, “Saturday was a fantastic session to finish the year. Our LTP program has now engaged over 120 young players this year between the ages of 12 and 18 and it’s a real success story for the club. The commitment of the 30 players who attended on Saturday couldn’t be faulted, especially in such bad weather. A special thank you to the coaches Dougie Owen, Sam Pennington, Ryan Berry, Lewis Hart, Mark Robinson and Gareth Pratt who have all delivered sessions throughout 2023.

“Also a special thankyou to Gareth Thomas at Wright Robinson Sports College who helped organise the use of the fantastic facilities for us to use. We have built our LTP patiently over the past three years and we now have games with young players representing Swinton Lions, outside of our senior professional team, for the first time in over 25 years since we had an Academy team during our days at Gigg Lane. It’s a real statement of our growing off-field development policy for both our Foundation and parent club to be putting these building blocks in place to help develop the Lions of the future.”