Leaders Of The Wolf Pack
Last season the highest number of viewers who tuned in to Sky TV to watch Championship football team Wolverhampton Wanderers play a league match was 405,000. Eyebrows would surely have been raised then when a match involving the Wanderers’ under 9’s kicked those numbers out of the park after 500,000 people watched the juniors play a club on tour from China. That’s a big increase on the usual crowd which largely comprises the players’ parents and coaches. The reason? Thousands of fans in Asia logged on to Chinese social media site Weibo to watch the match live. The crowd puller was that the visiting team had been put together by Thomas Cook Sports, the sports department of Thomas Cook which has a reputation for fostering young football talent in the region. Wolves Academy’s head of coaching and development Marc Campbell said: ‘We were delighted to welcome the young players and coaches to the academy…The players are over here to gain experience and had done a fair bit of training elsewhere so it was nice to arrange the friendly five-a-side game against some of our players which took place in the Academy Arena…All in all it was a very positive experience for everybody concerned’. Except perhaps for the senior players at the club. Come on lads!