One of the biggest success stories of the 2007/08 campaign within Deepdale has been the phenomenal response to the Club's new development centres - a coaching initiative aimed at bringing football to the children of Preston, and in turn bringing the best talent within Preston to PNE.

The centres, which have been in operation since last June, have helped North End to offer coaching to virtually every youngster within the city boundaries, with the Club's community and Centre of Excellence team working in tandem to offer football and fun for all within local primary and secondary schools.

The tireless work of youth development officer Darren Finch and community officer Gary Robinson has helped to put together a structure that has manage to yield great rewards in a very short space of time, as Robinson explains:

"The development centres started with Darren wanting to expand the amount of youth players coming into the Club from Preston and the 'Greater Preston' area. I've been going into schools with Deepdale Duck for the best part of four years, conducting a roadshow promoting the Club, and I offered the chance for the previous community coaches to come out and offer coaching sessions as well, but for whatever reason they decided not to do that.

"When Darren became youth development officer he decided he wanted to bring more local talent into the Club, so he saw this as being an ideal opportunity that he wanted to take. Darren could see the potential in offering coaching in local schools, and it's important to bring in local players wherever possible, because they're always likely to give you that extra ten per cent."

Finch added:

"On the back of Gary's roadshows, which have proven hugely influential with local children, we have taken the opportunity to meet with local headteachers, and have secured the chance to offer coaching in around 70 schools in the Preston area. Our coaching has proven so popular that if you go into our office you'll see a whiteboard absolutely jam packed full of names of schools that want to get involved, with no room on the board for any more!

"It's not just the case of looking for the next player, it's also a case of putting something back into our city, whilst also helping to generate additional revenue for the benefit of the youth department, so it's a win-win situation. Some children can play football, some can't, but we're giving everyone in our community that chance to join in.

"I think we're the first youth department in the county to run this kind of setup the way we do. Initially there was a community programme that was separate from our football development operation, but now there's a fluidity and transparency to the whole process. The system is self-explanatory, with the roadshow visits being the real grass roots, running into the development centres and then the elite centres, which are for players we want to work with more closely to see if they've got what it takes to then move into our Centre of Excellence.

"That of course moves into our youth team, reserve team and first team, providing a clear pathway for the very best players to succeed."

The centres aren't just confined to the city limits, with Robinson explaining that the programme spreads far and wide within PNE's traditional 'patch'.

"We're all the way up in Cockerham to the north, out towards Chipping in the east, down to Leyland and Chorley in the south and out towards Warton in the west," he explained.

"We've got a massive potential catchment area. You can go all the way up to south Cumbria without treading on anyone else's toes, and we want to do all we can to make everyone within that patch connect with this Club, as long as we're careful not to stray into areas that are considered to be another club's domain, because there are rules to be followed.

"For example, we won't go into Morecambe, because we don't want to cause conflict there, but we like to think that places like Lancaster and Carnforth can be considered both PNE and Morecambe territory, and there's room for healthy competition between the two.

"We're putting some really solid foundations in place. You're never going to start producing the very best players unless you literally look at every single child that's on your doorstep, and that's exactly what we're trying to do.

"We now have a much better opportunity to bring local talent through, and we're hoping that players from this area in the past that went to other clubs - the likes of James Vaughan, David Unsworth, Clarke Carlisle and Adam Nowland - will come here because we can be in there working with children from the age of seven and can ensure the very best in our area end up at Preston North End rather than another club.

"The development centres are all part of our programme of trying to work with local schools. We know how big a role model Preston North End can be for the children of this city, and it's not just a case of coming in to offer coaching courses for ten weeks and then say goodbye at the end of it, we want to build solid relationships between ourselves and each school to ensure that both parties are aware of the mutual benefits we can offer to one another.

"We're looking to support the schools in whatever way possible, be it player appearances, offering raffle prizes, bringing Deepdale Duck along for an educational programme or whatever. Schools in this area have often previously turned to other clubs for this type of programme, and that pains me.

"We often find that schools in places like Preston, Leyland and Chorley will often be welcoming schools from what we consider to be outside 'our area', and I want to think that now the word is out, they'll wanting to be turning to us first, because they've got a fantastic club on their doorstep.

"I think every aspect of what Darren has done has been excellent, and everybody can take benefits from it. Even the children taking part who aren't good enough to play for our Centre of Excellence are still getting an opportunity to play football and improve their skills, and we even get told that for many children it helps to improve their self-esteem.

"I've been to watch some of the training sessions, and over the course of the ten-week programmes, I've seen shy children grow in confidence to become far more outgoing by the end of it. They're also getting a lot of exercise, which is heralded as such a big thing these days.

"All the children get treated the same, and every child that attends a development centre is given a ticket to watch PNE at the end of it, and other goodies like stickers and wristbands, so they can feel an even greater connection to the Club that they've been training with. Even though we're conducting the training at their school, we still want them to feel that they've been training with Preston North End, and we want them to feel that they're a great part of our Club.

"You can already see that membership of our junior schemes is growing massively off the back of these courses, and we've been fortunate to meet with a number of parents off the back of these courses who are delighted that their children are able to get involved with them. The amazing number of children that I bump into in and around Deepdale who remember us from the development centres is also very pleasing.

"Everybody is winning from this, and Darren has got to take a lot of credit in getting this programme up and running. To get the current total of 70 schools involved in such a short space of time is testament to how hard he's been working. In the coming years, I'm sure we'll start to see the benefits of this hard work coming through in terms of the players that start knocking on the door of our first and youth teams.

"In the ten months or so that we've been running these centres, we've already secured around half a dozen players that we consider good enough to be a part of our Centre of Excellence. The bonus is that these kids support Preston as well, and that's a massive plus for someone who's as big a PNE fan as me! There's nothing better than seeing home-grown Preston players come through - just look at the likes of Paul McKenna, Kevin Kilbane, David Lucas, Andy Lonergan and the like.

"We're also very thankful to the support we're getting from people at board level, and we'd like to give them every credit for backing us to go out and deliver this programme."