ECCLESHILL United skipper Charlie Flaherty paid tribute to the skill and attitude of his overseas team-mates this week.

A significant proportion of Eagles players have come from the Richmond International Academic and Soccer Academy (RIASA), which is run by United’s director of football Mark Ellis and offers a learning and football background.

The RIASA college system provides young footballers the opportunity to play in England and, thanks to Ellis’s connections with his former club Bradford City, a potential route into the professional game. Nahki Wells, who came to the Bantams via this path, is the prime example of how the scheme can be a success.

This season’s intake currently forms more than half of the Eagles’ first choice line-up and an even greater percentage of the club’s first-team squad. Flaherty is one of the local stalwarts in the team and is glad of the chance to play with so many foreign players.

He said: “It’s great having so many good, fit, young, hungry players around the place and I think that helps all of us.

“We are a good footballing team and we like to embrace the RIASA philosophy. We would play that way even if the American lads weren’t here. The way Mark Ellis likes us to play is the right way but even he tells us that sometimes you just have to roll your sleeves up and put the hard graft in.”

There is a perception, especially among the rest of the Toolstation Northern Counties East Division One clubs, that it is too much of a culture shock and the boys from the USA don’t have the steel to cut it in a tough division.

But Flaherty sees it differently, saying: “Fair play to the lads who have come over here, not just this season because we have had some great players over the last few. They embrace it. They are used to good pitches in temperate conditions but they come here and play on difficult ones.

“It always takes them time to settle but they get used to the environment and the weather and they handle it well after that.

"It must be difficult coming to another country in itself. But they do that and develop their own game, while trying to improve our squad at the same time. You just have to admire that quality and determination.”