Albion have revealed how they are taking care of their array of academy players during the Covid-19 crisis.

And that includes those who have been told they are being let go.

The club have offered some of their young players extra chance to impress after their season was cut short by coronavirus.

Even those who know they are being released have been offered a chance to return for pre-season if they cannot get fixed up elsewhere in what could be a tough summer.

It is all part of a complex few weeks which have seen academy boss John Morling and staff look after their young players as much as possible.

That is from a football perspective but also general well-being.

The fact this is contract time for many makes it even more complicated.

Morling said: “There’s obviously the June 30 date for the under-23 players, there’s April 1 for the under-18s and then there was the nine-to-16-year-olds.

“The 16s you in do December anyway, so they would have been done, but the younger ones, 9-14s, would have been the third Saturday in July.

“We decided in the foundation phase, the younger ones, we wouldn’t release any players no matter what.

“In the youth development phase, we have released a few but the parents knew the process that we had to go through.

“We give them the option of, ‘Do you want to know now, or would you rather wait until we come back training or a month after we come back training? How do you want it? We will do whatever’s best for your family’.

“As it turned out, most of them now have been told. There weren’t many, it was probably ten across all of our ages.

“They’ve all obviously found out now and, in terms of what goes on next, we will try and help them as much as possible.

“For our 23s who didn’t get contracts, they can come back with us in pre-season.

“We’ve obviously put stuff together to go to clubs.

“We’d have done that previously in terms of touching base with interested clubs to try and get them work next year.

“We will have done similar with our 18s, whether they want to carry on looking for clubs.

“One’s going to go to university in America, so that’s the sort of things that we try and arrange for them.

“With the younger ones, we offer them a variety of stuff, really. They can come back in pre-season if they want, to get themselves fit in order to go on trials.

“They’ve got access to education. Some of them have been doing education with the teachers regularly.

“Some have access to the welfare department or the performance psychology department.

“In everything we do, even though they might have been released, they are still welcome to continue the programme until they want to obviously leave and go to another club.

“Being a parent of a player that has been released before, sometimes the best thing is to say, ‘No, that’s it, that’s me done, I’m now going on to pastures new’ but everyone’s different.

“We try and cater for that person, the person who wants to go to another club and anything in-between, basically.

“We’re there for the parents and the players for whatever they need us for over these next number of months because it is a difficult time, one that I didn’t really want to do in this in this period.

“But we’re governed obviously by the rules in the game that we have to do that, but I think people tried hard to make sure we try and move the date but obviously it wasn’t possible.”

Albion have arranged various activities – not all of them football-related – to keep young players fit and engaged.

Morling does not expect them to be adversely affected by the break from normal business, other than in terms of team play and tactics.

He said: “They have still been able to train to a point.

“But kids are so adaptable, in a few months they will catch up.

“We will be quite positive with that.

“If that’s the only issues we’re going to have from this pandemic, I think everyone will be fine with that.

“We’ll catch that up in two, three, four months’ time. I don’t see there being too much of an issue with that.

“It’s the wider impact the pandemic is going to have, whether it be health, wellbeing, the financial side.

“Those will have a bigger effect than catching up three or four months of technical stuff.”