It has been eight months since I won Nike’s global talent search competition The Chance and I now find myself in England playing in weekly auditions to land a professional playing contract!

Nike’s The Chance enabled players from around the world to trial for a place in the Nike Academy in the UK and I was one of eight lucky winners in January after a series of London trials. Two months ago I joined up with the Nike Academy, based at Loughborough University which is two hours north of London, to start pre-season training.

We have a squad of 22 players. We have the eight recent winners of The Chance and the others come from a variety of places, such as other professional clubs, or they are scholars looking to get a professional contract, while others had a pro contract before and are looking to win another. The quality of the players is very high. There is a mix of nationalities in the squad too. We mainly have UK-based players, but then you have myself from Australia, a couple of boys from South Africa, a Korean, one from Belgium and one from France. That adds some diversity in the group. Communication might be a bit of a problem for some of them, but that has not affected our play!

The pre-season has seen us get to know the Nike Academy coaches, including academy director, Huw Jennings, who has been in football for a long time, while head coach Jimmy Gilligan is one of the best coaches I have ever had. Assistant coach Matt Wells is closer to our age and had to step away from playing football, where he played at Tottenham as a youngster, due to injury. We have a good mix of coaches who know their stuff.

A regular day involving getting up, getting out on the pitch for training in the morning and then going to college for about three hours. In the afternoon we head back onto the pitches, or in the gym for a strength session, then dinner. We all live on campus at Loughborough University. We had no college schooling during pre-season, but this week we started that and we are doing a personal training course, so it fits in with the overall aim of the experience.

The aim of the academy is to earn a professional playing contract. While we do not play in a specific league as such, we have a series of games arranged for us, often against Premier League academy sides, including the likes of Sunderland and Tottenham. Every one of these games is a job interview, so there is no shortage on the competiveness! A bad game is an opportunity lost.

When appearing for the Academy I have been playing centre-midfield and have been starting most games. There has been a few injuries in the squad, but luckily I have stayed fit. I’m missing my friends and family, obviously, but it is a case of looking at the bigger picture and realising the opportunity I have in front of me. I have even been travelling okay with the English food too – they have us eating healthy at the academy!

I have already had the opportunity to have a trial in Denmark for a club there after they spotted me playing for the academy. The trial there was a great experience, I played slightly out of position, but I got to play and train with professionals in another country so can chalk that down to being another positive experience.

We are effectively in our season now – where we play one game a week. Next up is Championship side Bristol City and then Reading. We take things a game at a time, but in October there is talk of taking on Inter Milan! We have already been to Holland and Belgium to play. In terms of the make-up of these sides, we have no control over who they field. They might play their youth, reserve, trial, or even first-team players in their team. We played QPR four weeks ago and that comprised of first-team players. From the QPR team that won at Everton in the Premier League a few weeks ago, there were three players who faced us. We lost 3-1 in that QPR game, but I marked Akos Buzsaky, who started against Everton, and is an international with Hungary and Premier League player. It’s unreal!

The Nike Academy team is getting a lot more exposure, with more teams keen to play us. We have a schedule of games, there are no last minute arrangement, we know who we are playing three or four weeks ahead. The academy runs until May, so I only have until then to prove myself, but the plan is I get picked up by a professional club well before that May deadline! So roll on the next few games – if I’m lucky maybe Inter will pick me up!