How Newcastle signed teen talent Kayden Lucas under the noses of Bristol City and Bristol Rovers

“He rang me and said, ‘I’ve got this boy, he’s going to be a superstar, he’s a diamond’.”

Sliding doors moments are littered throughout life, but should Kayden Lucas end up fulfilling what, seven years on, looks increasingly like a prophecy rather than delirious hyperbole on the part of North Somerset Regional Talent Centre coach Tom Swash, he may reflect on a FA Youth Cup tie last August at Longwell Green as his.

Making his debut for Clevedon Town’s U18 side at the age of just 15, Lucas made more than a telling contribution. He completely ran the show, scoring four times in a 6-1 victory and fully justifying manager Lee Archer’s decision to draft him in.

On the sidelines that day were scouts from Newcastle United and Norwich City, who had been travelling back from another game in Bristol and just happened to stumble across this particular fixture and thought they would take it in.

Such was Lucas’ impact over the 90 minutes, by the next day Clevedon were receiving phone calls from the Magpies enquiring about his availability and whether he could travel up to the north east for a trial. Eleven months later, the teenager from Weston-super-mare has signed a two-year scholarship with the Premier League club.

The football gods may have shined upon him to an extent, in how he and Newcastle were ultimately brought together, but as many have said before, you tend to make your own luck in this game, and Kayden ‘Chumpy’ Lucas’ story goes far, far beyond fortune; it’s been about hard work, determination, resilience, multiple rejections and more hard work on top of that.

Lucas joined Weston Town U10s at the age of nine, such was his physical stature and athletic qualities, Swash - who was coaching the team while studying for his PGCE - saw no reason to consider dropping him down to his natural age group. A decision very quickly justified by the fact that in his first ever seven-a-side game at Hutton Moor Leisure Centre, he scored a hat-trick.

“He just ran through the team three times,” Swash tells Bristol Live, recalling with glee. “You just know in those moments, there’s something different about him, something unique. He was fast, he was direct and had an absolute wand of a left foot.”

Swash was soon advertising Lucas’ talents in excited tones to Craig Chappell, owner of the North Somerset RTC, who have centres based all around the region in training the best talent either overlooked or rejected by professional academies.

One of their centres was at Nailsea School, and Lucas - known by everyone as ‘Chumpy’ - used to catch a train to Backwell station and then walk on his own, a hour-round trip, to training each week. When the RTC moved to the 3G pitch at Clevedon, when he was 13, Lucas would stomp the three-mile route from Yatton station to the Everyone Active Stadium and back.

By that stage, his ability was well-established and he had started garnering attention from clubs in the area. A trial at Bristol City had been unsuccessful but after Chapell’s recommendation, Exeter City took him on at U13 level. Initially, he looked to have found a spot in the Grecians' system where he was utilised as a striker but after a year a change in coaching at that level saw a decision made to convert him to a left-back, as Lucas essentially became the victim of one of his greatest assets - possessing a great left foot - and he was subsequently released a year later.

“They tried to pigeonhole him and unfortunately at the end of the U14 season they said they were releasing him,” Chappell adds. “So then he came back to us and he was in a really bad way, and this is where we try so hard to support young players - our pastoral care is probably better than some pro clubs - so we had numerous meetings with mum and Kayden, just to try and help him. I can remember now, meeting him in Weston, and saying, ‘don’t give up on your dream; it’s just one person’s opinion so just keep plugging away and working hard.'”

Lucas continued to work on his game at the RTC, and took part in one-to-one sessions with Belgian “supercoach” Nicky Lelièvre, refining his technical skills and just perfecting the basics.

That has been a tenet of his time with the RTC, as Chappell recalls: “He was always a fantastic athlete. I remember seeing him for the first time and he was very, very fast, tall and gangly but a bit like Bambi on ice. Exeter signed him for his athletic potential but he’s gone away and worked away from training on his own; his right foot is as good as his left now, and his technical ability is excellent.

“We give our players the same advice - we’ll support them as much as we want but we can’t make them practice. We have so many players, we show them what to do and set them programmes, give them reviews on what they should work on, but very rarely does a player put that much in.

“I remember during Covid, Kayden's mum was sending me videos of him practising in their flat, there was little room but there he was, practising over and over again on the things we had been discussing over Zoom. Repetition, repetition, repetition.”

As he continued to improve, scoring goals regularly for the RTC and becoming just a more all-round player, the expectation was that another club would soon come calling but despite Chappell’s regular calls to contacts in the game, his championing of Chumpy often fell on deaf ears.

One club’s response was “we don’t need a striker but can he play left-back?” without even taking a proper look at him, another took him in for a trial period but a lack of care, attention and communication from a coach left him and his family feeling cold at the experience, and that had only occurred off the back of learning of how he had impressed at a talent ID day elsewhere. He was getting nowhere.

“He had a brilliant U15 season and I was ringing all the clubs - Newport, Forest Green, Rovers, City - and I was working for Southampton as a lead scout for the region, but nobody was interested,” Chappell says, with Sam Bell having come through the RTC in his younger years, and Charlie Filer, Max Davies and Joseph James, all promising talents in the City system signed via North Somerset.

“All of the clubs that I rung, the first thing they would say to me is, ‘is this the boy who Exeter have released?’ Yes, but, you need to understand context and they were like, ‘no, we’re not interested’.

“I tried to explain how he was out of position, how he’s a great lad who’s a brilliant worker and he’s only going to keep growing and getting quicker and stronger but it was a, ‘no, we’re not interested’. The attitude seemed to be - Exeter don’t want him so why would we?

“Very rarely do players recover from being released by a pro club. They find it hard to bounce back. Being told you’re not good enough at that age is hard, but also they’re dealing with that feeling that the other clubs won’t go near you; if you get released by Newport, Forest Green, Cheltenham, clubs like that, no one else is going to touch you because they feel they’re bottom of the pack.

“But clubs aren’t taking into account that players' athletic development changes over the years; you might have a boy of 13 who’s slow, but by 16 he’s rapid, however he’s already been written off. It’s a difficult one.”

Lee Archer had also been coaching at North Somerset and was brought into the Clevedon Town youth set-up by fellow RTC alumni Alex White, who had taken over as manager at the Everyone Active Stadium and basically gave him a blank page to reshape the U18 set-up.

Clevedon have a rich history of producing strong U18 sides, reaching the third round of the FA Youth Cup in 2018, but Archer spotted something special in the clutch of 15 and 16-year-olds he knew, Lucas being one of them.

“When Kayden was playing U16s, and this happens to every player, they feel like they have to do more than they should to make up for players who aren’t quite as good,” Archer said. “So he was dropping deep into midfield, picking the ball up and wasn’t staying up front because he felt he had to develop play as well.

“When I took over at Clevedon, he was ready for that level because he was big, strong and quick. Me and my assistant Jason Smith, who was a striker, we took him in and we just worked on the basics - his runs, staying high on the last man and running the channels. But his main attribute is his pace and his directness with a great left foot.

“He was 15, playing U18s football but we were a young bunch and I think that helped him as well. Sometimes when everybody is older it can be a bit intimidating but he knew a lot of the players and they knew him so he was comfortable straight away for us.

“We just developed him as a centre forward, rather than a No10. Just put him in as the last man and supply him, and the more he got that supply, the more he ran into those areas.

“What stands out is he’s got a bit of everything but you have to work on those attributes to bring him up to a level where he’s got those weapons consistently. Some clubs don’t want to do that, they’re just thinking, ‘oh, but his right foot is not as good’ or ‘he needs to be stronger here and there’. But the reality is he’s only 15 turning just 16 and those things will come as he develops as a young adult.

“It’s just giving them the belief, confidence in them that it doesn’t matter if they make a mistake, just keep doing the things we’re asking you to do and if you miss thee target, it doesn’t matter. Keep getting in there, keep shooting, keep creating chances and being in the right areas. That’s all we did, and the rest of it has come from him because he’s just got that attitude of he wants to be a pro.”

Lucas only made six appearances for Clevedon U18s, scoring nine times before sustaining an ankle injury. By that time, Newcastle had twice flown him up for trials, “fallen in love with him” - as Archer says - while also impressing his family with how they looked after them.

They even agreed to fund his ankle operation and his rehab over the second half of the 2023/24 season to put him in position to sign a two-year scholarship this summer at 16.

The phone calls had continued to come into Clevedon from other clubs, and City are understood to have offered him a scholarship after another trial, but his mind was made up. Then again, Newcastle’s resources and aims for their academy are such that maybe it was the best fit for him anyway.

“He was worried about the distance, he wanted a more local club but I said to him, ‘it’s an amazing club, they’ll look after you and your family. Just go, see if you enjoy it.’" Archer added. "So he went up there for a trial, they took his mum as well, put her up in a hotel and just treated them really well and he loved it up there. Absolutely loved it.

“He came back, we talked about it, and the next time he went up on his own, which is a big thing. And they fell in love with him, they saw the potential. It was a mutual thing, they really wanted him and he enjoyed it up there, and it was a no-brainer by then.

“He’s got every attribute a striker needs - he’s big, he’s strong, he’s quick, he’s got a great left, good in the air, his attribute and what he’s like as a person, well-rounded and grounded.

“They see him as a two-three year project, which is what he needs and that’s the difference between a Premier League club and, say, clubs like Bristol City or Bristol Rovers.

"They have a certain amount of people they can sign of that nature but, after that, they almost need the finished article because they haven’t got the financial scope to develop people over that period of time. It might not be until Kayden’s 20 that he’s a fully-grown player. Newcastle can sit on that, whereas City and Rovers can’t.”

Lucas is now beginning a new life in the north east and those numerous knock-backs, lonely walks along Kennmoor Road in all weather and sessions spent repeatedly working on his right foot have all been worth it. Further challenges lie ahead, though, and in many respects while his journey has already been a difficult one, it’s only just beginning.

“You could not meet a nicer kid and he deserves it,” Archer said. “Like most of them, he’s had that rejection but it’s not affected him at all. What he’s getting is what was missing, that little bit of belief that he’s better than everyone else. He just needs that little edge, to know when he walks into that Newcastle dressing room, that he’s even better than them.

“He does believe in himself but when you go from a big fish in a small pond, up to a Premier League club, you need that even more. He will have that, because he plays with that edge but it’s maybe getting that off the pitch a little bit. This is the first step. This is where the hard work starts but he’s so up for that. There are a lot of lads who get released and they mentally give up but he never thought like that.”

From Clevedon’s perspective, there’s been no transfer fee as such but they are hoping the Magpies can provide some kind of material compensation for signing Lucas who may prove to be the club’s greatest talent… despite never playing for the first-team.

“We’re negotiating with Newcastle to sponsor something at the moment,” said chairman Paul Davis. “Rather than looking for money, we’re looking for sponsorship; ‘can you provide us with something to help the club out’. I think they’re willing to do that but it is yet to be negotiated.

“It’s brilliant for him and he deserves it. We do have a policy of encouraging players to improve themselves and, equally, we do rely on our U18 side to provide for the first team - there were eight former U18s in the team last year and 14 in the previous season - so we do rely on them. We never stand in anybody’s way if they want to improve themselves.”

Everyone who has worked with Chumpy, seen first-hand the levels of emotional and physical commitment he puts into his game, is in no doubt he will make a success of his time at Newcastle, whatever it may entail. It may not result in a first-team breakthrough, as even now the odds are against it, before you even consider their recently-acquired status as a genuine Premier League heavyweight, but then again Lucas has bet against before, and each and every time he’s come back firing.

“He’s a lovely lad, such a hard worker, very quiet but he’s always worked on and honed his game,” Chappell said. “He’s so resilient; being independent and walking himself to training, being released by Exeter - there aren’t many players who recover from that.

“I’m over the moon for him because we’ve watched him grow from such a young age. He’s come on multiple tours abroad and always acquitted himself fantastically. His worth ethic is second to none, he deserves all of it. It’s a big, big move but I’m chuffed to bits for him.

“He was that boy who was obsessed with football. He had a dream of making it and, without being rude to him, I was championing him to so many clubs but I couldn’t see this coming. But it just shows the fine margins.

“I think his biggest challenge will be moving away from family and friends and starting a new life up there. That’s going to be massive for him but he’s definitely got the temperament; he’s quiet, he’s reserved but he can talk well and he’s got this quiet, determined focus that he knows what’s right and wrong. I think he’ll take it in his stride.”