Gillingham wanted to take Ebou Adams on trial before he left Dartford to sign for Norwich City.

Darts co-chairman Steve Irving revealed Adams had been on Gills' radar although they weren't prepared to make an offer for the 20-year-old.

Norwich contacted the National League South club last Wednesday and agreed a fee before Adams went for a medical and signed an 18-month contract at Carrow Road.

Mr Irving said: "It came about last week. Norwich came along to the Wealdstone game and apparently that was the third time they’d been.

"The next day, they phoned Tony (Burman) and said ‘we’d like to make an offer’ so they did and we’ve been negotiating with them over the last few days.

"It was out of the blue. Nobody else has come in for him.

"We thought possibly there would be one or two others so we were a bit surprised that no-one else did.

"I know Gillingham were watching him and wanted him to go on trial but they (Norwich) made the offer.

"We considered (Gillingham's proposal) and rejected it. They wanted to take him on trial so we said ‘the best thing for you is to come and watch him play in some hardcore games in the National League’ and they weren’t interested - so that was the end of that one."

Burman explained why they didn't want Adams going out on trial.

"I spoke about him to quite a few people," the manager said. "There was a lot of asking 'can we have him in for a week?' and that was refused simply because it's taking him out of his own environment and they needed to see him in that environment.

"We had enough games for people to look at him. When you do things like that, it can go one way or another. If a player doesn't get what he thinks he might get when he starts that week's trial, it can knock him for six.

"It wasn't just Gillingham. There were other clubs who wanted him in for a week but you've got to be careful when you do that sort of agreement."