Albion’s new summer signing, Elliot Bennett, met the children of Westdene Primary school yesterday to kick off this season’s Young Seagulls school scheme.

The scheme, in its second year, allows participating schools to adopt a player for the season. The players will visit their allocated school every Thursday afternoon, until May, joining in on a variety of classroom lessons and activities.

Young Seagulls schools liaison officer Sally-Anne Hayes commented: “It's been a fantastic year, and we've seen the players helping with the traditional subjects of reading, writing and numeracy, and also with cooking, art, dance and of course PE and football.”

Teachers from this year’s twenty-five new member schools were invited to Withdean for an opening evening last week, where they met the players and club representatives, including both club manager Russell Slade and chairman Tony Bloom. As part of the scheme, the club have donated an Albion-branded computer to each school, provided by the club’s sponsor, IT First, and each school will have a chance to see their player in action at an Albion home game this season.