Driver looks for Luton starlet Smith to blossom at Canaries

Young Luton midfielder Charlie Smith’s loan spell at near neighbours Hitchin Town will help him to develop as a player according to youth team coach Paul Driver, writes Mark Wood.
Staines Town v Luton Town. Photos by Liam Smith. wk 49.Staines Town v Luton Town. Photos by Liam Smith. wk 49.
Staines Town v Luton Town. Photos by Liam Smith. wk 49.

Town’s youth coach was impressed with what he saw last week as the youngster helped the Southern League Division One Central side stun League One Stevenage 1-0 in the Herts Senior Challenge Cup quarter-finals.

Driver said: “The game against Stevenage the other night, probably you’d have looked at it and thought it was an U21 development game and not what he’ll get playing in the Southern Prem.

“It was a game where at least he gets to know the players, they get to know him, and then he can start to get some games under his belt at that level and he certainly looked physically fit and strong and for a first game I thought he done well.

“We will leave him there as long as we think it’s improving him. If that’s two months it’s two months, and if it’s two weeks then it’s two weeks.

“With work experience you don’t have a length. Because he’s not pro and he’s a scholar you can go out and he can still come back here and play for me.

“If they were called off Saturday and we go ahead at Colchester for example we can drag him in, which you can’t do if it’s a full youth loan or a normal loan.

“It’s open-ended from my point of view, while he continues to improve with it and gain from it then that’s more important than him coming in and being a part of it.

“We want to do well with our team, but at the end of it, in two, three years time I want to be sitting and looking on the pitch and seeing three of these lads playing there rather than keeping them back here and we’ve won the league and you forget about that.

“After two years it’s about what’s right for the individual boy and if a month or so down the line we think that that suits some of the other boys then we’ll do that as well and the younger ones will just have to come in and prove their not far off the older ones.”

And he’s hopeful that exposure to the men’s game will help to develop his game as he bids to win a pro contract.

Driver added: “Rather than putting all the boys out on block and saying we’re going to put the older kids out for experience in the men’s game, we looked at it with the manager and just felt that, with him, of all of the boys he was the one that would be pushed the most in men’s football.

“Zane Banton would probably come in the same gear, but obviously Zane is proed already.

“And we just felt with him, little elements of his game, the physical side of his game would benefit from being in men’s football.

“We’re not saying he’s not physically strong enough, but he needs to be up and back and being forced to be getting up and back and working hard.

“That he would probably have to if he was playing at that sort of level.

“Obviously we spoke to Mark Burke over at Hitchin and what he wanted fitted what we wanted out of Charlie, so that’s the thinking behind sending him there.”

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