Barrow AFC’s Community Trust are into the final week of their summer holiday camps, which have been bringing on youngsters’ footballing skills as well as letting them try their hand at other sports.

The Bluebirds are finishing five weeks of keeping kids active during the school holidays with a football camp at Furness College, an institution the club have been forming closer and closer ties with in recent times.

They previously had a multi-sport camp last week, which followed three weeks of running similar sessions at St Bernard’s School on Rating Lane.

The aim of the camps has been to not only develop the children’s understanding of football, but to also bring on teamwork skills, not to mention to ensure everyone has a good time.

Community coach Brad Hubbold said: “We’ve had lots of different children come on the course and we’ve done multi-sports as well as football, which tries to get the kids involved in as many different activities as we can.

“We’ve played a game called ‘capture the flag’ so they’re trying to work together as teams, with the older ones mixing with the younger ones.

“It puts a bit of responsibility on the older ones to act as leaders to explain games and show and set examples for the others because obviously it is new to the younger ones.

“They’ve picked it up really quickly, though, and they’ve been going really well.”

The other sports the kids at the Bluebirds’ course have been taking part in over the last month include hockey, tag rugby and cricket, while the coaches also set up a mini golf course while they were at St Bernard’s.

Hubbold said: “I’m a big believer in that if you’ve never played the sport, you give it a go and then it’s down to us to make it easier for them to take part in games.

“Some people will say it’s really hard for them to join in games, but I feel it’s only because they’ve never done it before, so you’ve just got to give them time to have some free play, experiment with the games and hopefully they will come away and enjoy it.”

The Community Trust have been back at their ‘base’ at Furness College for the last couple of weeks, but Hubbold enjoyed using the facilities at St Bernard’s as well.

He said: “We had use of the indoor sports halls, so it was good to split them up if the weather wasn’t great, but then the use of the fields was fantastic because we had use of the hills for the football golf.”