Young midfielder Chris Fayers has started his dream of a professional football career by signing a youth contract with Spanish top division team CD Leganes

Fayers will be a huge loss for the Magpies but they have been boosted by Tom Davies, one of the Northern NSW NPL’s best defenders, joining Maitland under his first senior coach Mick Bolch.

Bolch said it was wonderful news for Fayers and he was delighted to welcome Davies to the Magpies.

Davies will join the Magpies other key signing striker Joel Wood at pre-season training and there will be lots of familiar faces to greet both players.

Wood is a former Magpie and Davies will reunite with old Hamilton teammates Andrew and Mathew Swan, Grant Brown and Sean Pratt.

At just 21, Davies has six years of first grade experience notching up 95 games and will be a huge addition to an already strong defensive unit.

Studying his final year of a sports science degree, Davies was unable to commit to training three nights a week at Olympic and sought a change of club.

“Tommy Davies rang me out of the blue. He had agreed to go back to Olympic, but circumstances changed with his uni commitments,” Bolch said.

“He is a great defender, he came through the Jets Youth system until he was about 15 or 16 and then he went to Olympic and played three or four games in 18s before making his first grade debut and has been in first grade since.

“He is 21 and has played 95 first grade games. He is just an old school defender he is hard as nails, he wins his individual battles, he marks people like Luke Remington and (James) Virgili out of games.” 

Davies said he is looking forward to joining Maitland and believes they can push for the title in 2019.

“I love playing under Bolchy and the Swan brothers were a massive reason for going up to Maitland as well. I love playing with them because I know every game they play they give 100 per cent.

“I’m looking forward to going up to Maitland with the Swan brothers, Matt Thompson, Matt Comerford and all the other boys there it’s such a great squad.

“They are a semi-final squad already and next year if everyone stays fit and healthy they’ll be pushing to win it.”

Bolch agreed with Davies assessment..

“We don’t need much, we’ve re-signed all of the boys. The groups pretty good and there’s some good boys coming through,” he said.

“You want to add two or three each year just to freshen things up with competition for spot.

“We needed a number nine we all saw that this year. Joel Woods is a good target man, he has been at the club before. He did well this year, he scored eight goals in a team which ran dead last.