Raith Rovers are planning for a squad rebuild this summer after telling the SPFL they want to be included in the reserve set-up next season.
Stark’s Park chief executive Andy Barrowman has held discussions with the governing body over the Kirkcaldy club’s plans for a second-string.
With uncertainty over the make-up of the reserve structure for next term, Raith have ‘noted their interest’ in being involved.
That will mean revamping the squad, with the likelihood of younger signings this summer and a greater link-up with the Rovers’ community club, to ensure they have the numbers to compete.
“We’ve always said we would like to have some form of bridge between the community club and the first-team,” Barrowman told Courier Sport. “We’ve always said that from the outset.
“What that looks like is the part we’ve been working through in the last few months. There’s been discussions.
“We signed two or three players last summer that started moving us towards that and having that squad of maybe six or eight younger players that supplement the first-team squad.
“I think the SPFL don’t really know how that [reserve] format is going to look.
“There has obviously been the Reserve League and the Reserve Cup.
Interest
“Will it be the same next year? They probably can’t tell us at this stage.
“But we’ve noted our interest that we’d like to be part of whatever that looks like.
“Once that comes, we would need to have players that allowed for that to happen.”
Raith recruited teenagers Kai Montagu, Lewis Gibson and Jake Nicholson last summer to bring the average age down in a squad that had been supplemented by thirty-somethings Lewis Stevenson, Paul Hanlon and Callum Fordyce.
Technical director John Potter also works closely with the Raith Rovers Community Foundation – the official charity of the club that is run financially and operationally independently.
Nicholson was identified from that source and others could follow to boost numbers for a reserve team.
“If you look at our squad just now, with four or five injuries then all of a sudden you’re short in numbers,” added Barrowman, with Callum Hannah having returned from his loan at Montrose.
“That would mean obviously our recruitment would have to be geared towards that plan.
“That involves our community club. We’ve got two or three young lads that come and train with the first-team every Monday. They get day release from school; that’s been happening for the last few months.
Pathway
“So that pathway, that step, doesn’t always have to be players that we sign externally.
“It’s been an on-going thing. Just hopefully, come the summer, then we have some shape or form of what we’ve been talking about.
“We want to try and get players in our first-team – ones from our community club, ones from externally – and just try and create that pathway and then build on it.
“Then, can we have another team? Can we have a team at U/16s? Can we build on it that way? Who knows?”
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