WINCHESTER City’s young reserve side have given the entire club a huge boost going into Saturday’s Evo-Stik South West fixture at home to Bishops Cleeve.

Three 16-year-olds – hat-trick man Ben Sunley, Harvey Clark and Bailey Difford- scored in a 7-1 Wyvern Combination win at Wimborne Town on Wednesday along with 17-year-old IK Hill.

The other man on target was a 36-year-old – the club’s player-manager Craig Davis, who helped out because they were a player short.

“It was an excellent performance. The whole team was under-18, except me!” smiled Davis.

“We’ve got such a good group of young players and all credit goes to Elliott Trodd, our head of youth development, and Ryan Andress, the team manager.

“I had to take a keen interest in youth when I managed Fleet and I’ll always do so here,” added Davis.

“I went down to Wimborne to watch and ended up playing. There’s no better way of seeing what these young lads are like than playing alongside them and I can’t believe how good some of them are.”

Hill is already a regular in the first-team squad and Davis anticipates many more young guns breaking through.

“We pretty much played all the youngsters in the League Cup against Totton and we’ve got a Southampton Senior Cup game coming up against Nursling and they’ll play in that too,” he said.

“I think a lot of them will get in and around the first team.

“I’ve been to every reserve game, along with our scout Pete Millard, and Wednesday's win was a big boost for the whole club.

“It’s not a case of them and us, we’re all in it together.”

After coming back from 2-0 down to pick up a good point at Cinderford last week, City’s first-team have an ideal chance to build on it at home to rock-bottom Bishops Cleeve.

Defender Josh Harfield sits out a one-match suspension for five bookings, while Simba Mlamba is still struggling with a shoulder problem.