After being scouted by three professional clubs at our Manchester event, 10-year-old goalkeeper Oliver Howard has gone on to sign for League One side Accrington Stanley!

It hasn’t been an easy journey for Oliver to get where he is today though. We spoke to his mother Laura who explained: “Oliver was diagnosed with Perthes disease when he was younger, which was a crack in his hip and the bone was degrading away.”

“Because of this he wasn’t allowed to play football for a year, which was gutting as he loved it and was great at it.” She added.

However, the 10-year-old didn’t let that stop him. Laura told us: “Oliver changed his lifestyle completely. He cut out gluten and dairy and he worked really hard throughout that year. He took up things like cycling, yoga and swimming and was finally able to return to football as a goalkeeper.”

We asked Laura to talk us though what happened in the build up to Oliver signing, she explained: “The signing came about from Burnley emailing asking Oliver to come on trial. However, he had already been training with Accrington at this point for around three weeks.”

“When the head coach of Accrington rang, he explained how much they liked Oliver. Because of this, I mentioned that Burnley had been in contact as I didn’t want to go behind their back.”

She continued: “From this, Accrington had a meeting and said that they didn’t want to hang around and that they wanted to sign him, so we took them up on the offer right away as they are a great club and Oliver is really happy there.”

When asked how Oliver is feeling about all of this, Laura told us: “He’s really excited. He’s played a couple of games for Accrington and he’s just getting used to it all. His first game was against Preston and he also played against Manchester City last week.”

She also said: “I think he was a bit nervous to be honest, partly because the academy and the stadium is so big and because he’s a Manchester United fan so he really wanted to beat City.”

“Both games were a great experience and he’s learning a lot from Accrington and doing really well.” She added.

Everyone at UK Football Trials would like to firstly, congratulate Oliver on Signing for Accrington, but also for not giving up when many others would have. Oliver has displayed the perfect attitude and is now reaping the rewards that he has worked incredibly hard for.