The Gosford club is continuing to expand its footprint in country NSW putting almost 100 elite youth players through their paces in Bathurst on the weekend.

A partnership struck at the beginning of the year with Western NSW Football has seen the best of the west rebadged Western NSW Mariners FC.

Under the strategic agreement teams play in the Mariners kit in the Football NSW Super Youth League.

Mariners youth coach Tony Walmsley said: “This is not just about getting our brand out there – it’s about building a relationship so when the next best thing turns up at the local park on a Saturday morning, we actually get to know about him first.”

In their recent trip west, Walmsley and his assistant coach John McLafferty held a coaching seminar and ran the rule over the latest crop of footballing talent.

About 70 male and 20 female players took part and, with the Mariners’ youth team trials beginning next month, local players took their chance to try to make the step up.

“There’s talent everywhere in the regions but the football environment is not always conducive to helping players achieve their potential,” Walmsley said.

“The WNSW Mariners is a development pathway for players in the region to get face-to-face contact with Mariners technical staff and where coaches will be educated in our vision and philosophy.

“They’ve certainly got a lot going for them in the region and if we can put the right technical programs in place, with the right amount of effort, there’s certainly an opportunity for champions to come through.”

While the Mariners will prioritise the long-term development of players in their own backyard through the Central Coast Mariners Academy, the club is keen to stake a claim for the largely untapped potential in the state’s west.

Walmsley – who accompanied a western NSW rep side to China last year – said the move into the state’s interior wasn’t a snatch and run operation and that much of the attention is being focused on developing the academy’s 13 to 14-year-olds.

Two players - left-footed striker Jacob Harris and midfielder Tim Porter – have already relocated to Sydney through the program and central defender Jacob Tratt is the latest to catch the eye.

The Orange-based academy draws from as far afield as Dubbo, Lithgow and Wagga, with many players facing a gruelling three to four hour round trip just to attend training.

“It’s a huge commitment,” Operations and Development Manager for Western NSW Football Andrew Fearnley said of the players. “The biggest obstacle has always been travel and the number of sessions we’re able to do together.

“But we’ve had a good relationship with the Mariners since the A-League started and I certainly think with Western Sydney trying to get a foothold in the western area of Sydney that Central Coast will see us as another good catchment area for them.

“If you look at Rhyan Grant, Nathan Sherlock and Archie Thompson, they’ve come from the Central West area and gone on to play in the A-League. Nathan Burns as well – it’s not unachievable for our boys to go on and do it.”

Fearnley said the end-game was to give their best players a shot at the Central Coast youth team and from there the A-League.

As stepping stones go it makes sense. The Bluetongue boys have dominated the four-year-old NYL competition – winners in 2009-10 and 2011-12, and runners-up in 2010-11 – but much of that success has been built on harnessing the wealth of talent in the Sydney catchment.

Jimmy Oates (Manly), Mitchell Duke (Blacktown) and Anthony Caceres (Marconi) are the latest youth league players to make the transition to the Mariners’ first team.

Walmsley said the club won’t be ceding ground in the Sydney territorial wars and retains strong links with Gladesville-Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai District football associations.

But, he added, the launch of Wanderers underlined the long-term strategic value of fostering elite development in their own backyard and now in the state’s west.