Chippenham Town boss Gary Horgan said that the club were looking to find the next lower league success story as they host an open trial this weekend.

The Bluebirds announced in April that they would be hosting a trial match for players between 18 and 24 who had been playing in Step 3, 4, and 5.

Horgan said with the success of Dan Ellison having stepped up from Devizes Town and now being on the radars of EFL clubs and many others like him in recent years, he was hoping that this trial would give the club the chance to find another potential under-the-radar star.

He said: “Maybe this is something that clubs don’t look at doing, because from the outside it probably looks like you haven’t got your recruitment in order, but we don't care what people think as there are many clubs at our level who are doing this well – Chelmsford have been doing it well for a while.

"I don’t know what you lose by doing it other than a few hours of my time.

“We know that there are some really good players that might otherwise not be given a chance, maybe they don’t have an agent or don’t push themselves like that.

“There have been a number of really good players that have stepped up from step three and four, like Dan and also Jermaine Francis and Jordan Thomas and hopefully we can find that next success story.

“We are not expecting hordes and hordes out of it, but even if we get one or two that join us for preseason then it will have been worth it.”

Chippenham had to halt applications after over 500 players had signed up and then set about filtering the group down to the ones that would be invited.

Horgan said: “Throughout the season we are inundated with people wanting to join us and in pre-season you get people on trial you haven’t seen before who are not up to it, it is almost a screening process for that.

“It was a lot of work with 520 rows on a spreadsheet and you are going through getting rid of those who didn’t meet our entry criteria and also things like their financial expectations and geography.

“We had a really wide and varied response, with lots of them sending clips so we can see those who can genuinely play at the level so we can filter it down.”