This year’s EFL Kids Cup burst into action this week with both the Hyndburn & Ribble Valley competitions taking place.

The kid’s cup is a U11’s national competition that sees schools from all over the country battle it out to represent their local football club at the regional finals and hopefully the National final at Wembley.

In partnership with Hyndburn and Ribble Valley School Sports Partnership, we ran two tournaments, one for schools in the Ribble Valley and the other for schools in Hyndburn, with the four semi-finalists from both tournaments successfully qualifying for the area final in November where they will battle out it out for the chance to represent Accrington Stanley.

We had St Wulstan’s, Gisburn, Salesbury, Barrow, St Josephs, St Marys Langho, St Leonards and St Michael and St Johns all represented their school in the Ribble Valley tournament while Mount Pleasant, St Bart’s, St Marys Oswaldtwistle, St Marys Clayton, St Nicolas’, Benjamin Hargreaves, West End, Great Harwood, Peel Park, Baxenden, Moor End, St Peters & Pauls and Belthorn compete in the Hyndburn event.

After some close calls and some teams battling the English weather the winners of the tournaments were crowned, well done to St Mary’s Clayton and St Mary’s Langho. We look forward to welcoming the winners and the runners up St Peter & St Pauls, St Marys Clayton, Peel Park, Barrow, Salesbury and St Wulstan’s in November to the Stanley Sports Hub for the area finals.

Lee Walsh, Head of Sport at Accrington Stanley Community Trust commented, ‘It was great to see so many teams from the local area compete with each other at a high standard. We are looking forward to welcoming the finalists to the sports hub and are excited to see what team will represent us.’