Dover manager Andy Hessenthaler believes early exposure to National League football has helped George Wilkinson’s development.

The 17-year-old midfielder is on the second week of a fortnight’s trial with Championship outfit Stoke City, having broken into Dover’s first-team this campaign.

Wilkinson made his sixth start of the season at FC Halifax last Saturday and also has five substitute outings to his name having made his league debut as recently as January.

“We had George at Stoke last week and he is up there for a second week now,” explained Hessenthaler.

“They asked me if they could have a closer look at him and as a club we couldn’t say no - how can you stand in his way?

“We’ve had a conversation with Stoke and I’m sure they will do it right if they want to take him. He didn’t do himself any harm on Saturday at Halifax, either.

“His age is scary for me, just 17, and physically he is strong enough in our league. Training with us on a regular basis has helped him and he is getting the pace of the game now.

“There was one game early on when he was too far off it but that’s the learning curve, making the change from playing academy football to National League matches.”

Hessenthaler has bloodied Academy products Wilkinson, Luke Baptiste, Noah Carney and Harrison Byfield this season, while 18-year-old Will Moses made his first start since playing Aldershot in October 2020 last weekend following a long-term injury.

All of them deserve their places on merit according to the Whites boss.

“The kids are showing how good they are and we’ve got to try and promote them,” added Hessenthaler.

“Hopefully the fans recognise that and come to support them, watch them play and see how good they are.

“We’re focusing on that to the end of the season. Will Moses had his first start in over a year, played out of position in midfield and did very well. George Wilkinson also started and Luke Baptiste and Harrison Byford came on.

“We’ve still got to have the experienced players in the team, even though they are quite young themselves in most cases with the average age of 21!

“We can’t throw too many of them in (at once) but it’s nice that they are handling themselves well at this level of football.

“That’s the key for the club going forward, if they can play at this level then they can certainly play at the level below next season.”

Dover’s pending relegation could be mathematically confirmed this Saturday.

If Dover fail to win at home to Yeovil or Aldershot beat King’s Lynn then they will be relegated with 11 games of the campaign - a quarter of the season - still to go.

“It’s been coming and it’s a shame but before we even kicked a ball it was always going to be tough because we’ve got the smallest budget in this league,” said Hessenthaler.

“It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the sides down the bottom of the table, not just Dover, are the ones with the smaller budgets.

“It was always going to be a mountain to climb and deep down maybe we knew that this day would come (when we started).

“Of course, we want to be in the top flight of non-league but next season Dover will be in a league that we can compete in financially.”