TOWN’S stars of the future are being urged to continue the club’s fine Milk Cup tradition, as they travel to Ireland for the annual competition.

In previous years Swindon’s youngsters have regularly returned from the tournament with silverware, including the Milk Cup proper, the BT Trophy, player of the tournament, the Fair Play award and top scorer.

And Centre of Excellence Director Jeremy Newton believes they have enough quality to emulate that success this time round.

“We’ve got a good strong squad this year,” said Newton of his under 14 and under 15 players.

“It’s always been a competition that we’ve enjoyed playing in and generally done pretty well.

“Paul (Bodin, Town youth team coach) went across and won the Milk Cup, and then the year after that we won the BT Trophy, so expectations are high.

“Swindon have got a good name in the Milk Cup and we tend to do very well every year we go. The challenge is to try and emulate what Paul did in 2006.”

Town kick off their cup exploits on Monday against Dublin before facing Israeli outfit Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Newton added: “We’ve been back in training for four weeks now,” he said.

“The boys have had three warm-up games against Plymouth, Fulham and Cardiff, which was good preparation against good sides.

“We will also travel over a day earlier than normal, leaving on Saturday (today).

“The reason we are doing that is normally when we arrive on Sunday the lads are all excited by the parade and stuff like that, and that makes it very difficult to get them ready to go again on the Monday for their first game.