Two former young Clarets sign for new clubs

07/05/2024 06:46 AM

Two players, both of whom made first team debuts for Burnley, have signed for new clubs on opposite sides of the world.

When Burnley reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup in 2011/12 and then beat Manchester United at Old Trafford in the following season in the same competition, one of the key players was New Zealander Cameron Howieson.

He left Burnley in 2015 having made two brief substitute appearances for us in April 2012. He moved to St Mirren for a couple of years before returning home to New Zealand for whom he was most recently playing for Auckland City where he's been since January 2017.

This week, he moved to Auckland FC, a new club formed only in March this year and they will start life by playing the 2024/25 season as one of the two expansion clubs in the Australian A League. This new club are owned by Billy Foley, the owner of Premier League club Bournemouth.

When Howieson left Burnley, he'd played nine times for his country, although only one of those was a start. He's since taken his total of caps to twenty and last weekend scored his first All Whites goal in the OFC Final against Vanuata.

Closer to home, much closer, Anthony Glennon, who was surprisingly released by Grimsby at the end of last season, has penned a deal with Newport County.

Glennon, like Howieson, made the first team at Burnley although he didn't make any Premier League appearances for us. All three came during the behind closed doors season of 2020/21.

His debut was in the League Cup at Millwall, where he came on as a substitute for Dwight McNeil. He replaced Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson in the FA Cup tie against MK before starting and playing the whole game in the fifth round defeat against Bournemouth.

By then, he'd already played League Two football on loan at Grimsby and when he left Burnley at the end of the 2021/22 season, he joined Grimsby on a full time basis.

His two years at Grimsby came to an end despite him having played a total of sixty games for them in the last two seasons, leading to this move to Newport where he has signed a two-year deal.

We wish both of them the very best at their respective new clubs.