Sheppey United youth striker Davey Johnson has earned a trial with a Football League club after impressing in his first senior men’s football match.

Johnson, 16, has been invited to train with Leyton Orient’s scholarship team this week and is set to play in an under-17 game against Arsenal’s youth team tomorrow (Tuesday).

Johnson was picked out straight away as a standout player for Sheppey under-23s by recently-appointed director of football Matt Longhurst, who was keen to get the forward playing for a senior side.

Ten days ago he came off the bench for Southern Counties East Premier Division side Welling Town, who he had joined on loan, and made an immediate impact by setting up a goal. Longhurst had contacts at Leyton Orient and made sure someone from the club’s youth department was there to watch.

He said: “I picked him out playing for our under-23s and after just 10 minutes I was like ‘he has got something this kid.’

“Kevin (Oakes, the Welling Town manager) was asking for a forward and I said, ‘take this kid, he is good enough to play for you. He went there, had never met anyone, came off the bench and got an assist.

“I have a good relationship with Leyton Orient from my time at Erith & Belvedere and I said they needed to have a look at him. He’s a big strong and powerful boy, really talented.

“They watched the game and straight after phoned me and asked ‘when can we get him in!?’

Johnson was due to train with Orient’s under-18s today (Monday) ahead of a match tomorrow.

Longhurst said: “There is a pathway here at Sheppey and it will be interesting to see how he does but what a great experience for a 16-year-old from Sheppey to have gone from a Welling Town game to playing Arsenal in just a few days.”

Sheppey are looking to grow their youth section, hoping to boost the numbers by more than double from the current 14 teams playing at the club.

“We will continue to grow that every year,” said the director of football.

“We want to make sure we have got two sides to the youth section, a community side for children who just want to play sport and be in a team, and then more of an elite side where kids have aspirations to play in the first team and beyond that.

“We want there to be an opportunity for everyone to come to the club.

“There are a lot of people around here that haven’t been to the stadium, and obviously it is quite impressive at Sheppey with the 3G and all the works going on. The idea is to try and get as much community engagement as we can.

“We are trying to get people into the club who have never been there before, which is similar to the Ramsgate scenario when I first went there. We were getting 150-160 fans and turned that into nearly 1,000.”

Sheppey are running academy nights for junior players, while soccer schools are coming in April and the expansion of their youth sections means they plan to have a secondary site for matches running out of a local school.