Young footballers from a Ceredigion village are celebrating after winning a brand-new kit in our UEFA EURO U19 competition. 

Penparcau Tigers Under-13s were chosen as the winners of the giveaway by Lock Stock Self Storage earlier this year.

Coach Daniel Owen, a history teacher at Ysgol Penglais, said finding kit sponsors can be difficult and admitted the players were “very excited” when they discovered they would be turning out in new strips.

The side play their games on Saturday mornings at Blaendolau playing fields and compete in the Aberystwyth Junior Football League.

Lock Stock, the UK’s largest container storage firm, launched the competition to mark its support for the summer’s UEFA European Under-19 Championship.

The Denbigh-based company was the official storage partner of the championship, which took place in June and July and was staged in North Wales for the first time.

The competition was open to school and junior football sides and people were invited to nominate teams via Lock Stock’s social media platforms, with the winner being drawn randomly.

Daniel, whose son Patrick plays for Penparcau Under-11s, said: “This will be the second year I have coached the team, and it’s brilliant to have a new kit from Lock Stock. It really helps us.”

“There are 15 teams in our league, and we all play each other once, and we have cup games too, so the new kits will have plenty of use.

“The hope with having youngsters play at this age is that they will go through the ranks and make their way into playing senior football.

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“Playing sport is important because it teaches youngsters about being part of a team, a lot of the players have been together now for three to four years and enjoy playing together.

“At Penparcau we have the main senior team, there is an under-15s team, the under-13s and there are three under-11s now and there is an under-nines, so it’s a fairly big set-up.”

The UEFA European Under-19 Championship games were held at Central Park in Denbigh, Bangor City Stadium, the Oval in Caernarfon, and Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground.

Spain were crowned the winners, and the tournament saw teams from Wales, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Serbia and Ukraine take part.

The kit giveaway competition is part of Lock Stock’s ethos of supporting grassroots sport in the communities it serves.

As the main title sponsors of the Ardal Northern Leagues, Lock Stock has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds into Welsh football over the past two decades.

Lock Stock’s site on the busy Rheidol Retail Park in the town has more than 100 units of sizes available ranging from 10, 20 and 40 foot.

Marketing officer Ollie Beech said the company was committed to supporting the communities it operated in.

He said: “Grassroots football is the lifeblood of the game in Wales and clubs like Penparcau are absolutely essential to not only their communities but to the wider game too.

“We were absolutely delighted to launch the competition as part of our sponsorship of the tournament and the idea for us to leave a legacy for a club within our network was something that really appealed to us.

“To be able to draw the winner, and the winner being Penparcau, who are just down the road from our Aberystwyth site, was wonderful.

“We can’t wait to see the guys wearing the kit, playing games and hopefully winning a few matches as well.

Ollie added: “Our Aberystwyth site opened in November of last year and we couldn’t be happier with the response we had from the local community.

“We have been welcomed with open arms and that has been really pleasing.

“The success we have had there has been fantastic and so the opportunity to give back to that community is something we are really happy to do, and that is something we will not stop doing, not just in Aberystwyth but across our network as well.”