T&T de­fend­er Le­land Archer is hop­ing his train­ing stint with Scot­tish Pre­mier­ship club Hi­ber­ni­ans FC will jump start Eu­ro­pean pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer.

The 24-year-old Archer and mid­field­er Rob­bie Craw­ford kicked off the strate­gic part­ner­ship play­er de­vel­op­ment be­tween Unit­ed Soc­cer League's (USL) Charleston Bat­tery with Hi­bern­ian FC, ear­li­er this month.

The part­ner­ship will pro­vide col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween both clubs on mat­ters in­clud­ing play­er de­vel­op­ment, scout­ing ef­forts, op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment. The two his­toric or­gan­i­sa­tions en­vi­sion an evolv­ing re­la­tion­ship found­ed on shared val­ues and philoso­phies em­ployed on and off the pitch.

The two play­ers be­gan train­ing with Hi­bern­ian FC ear­li­er this month to gain valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in a top-tier Eu­ro­pean pro­fes­sion­al league dur­ing the Bat­tery’s off-sea­son and like­wise, Hi­bern­ian play­ers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to train in Charleston with the Bat­tery.

Craw­ford en­joyed a pro­duc­tive sea­son with the Bat­tery as was vot­ed as the cub’s “De­fen­sive Play­er of the Year” as well as “Most Valu­able Play­er” af­ter he was se­lect­ed to the USL All-Sec­ond Team.

And speak­ing in Scot­land with dead­line­news.co.uk, the for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege stand­out says he is hope­ful of land­ing a deal at East­er Road as he knows a switch to Scot­land could pro­vide a launch­pad for the rest of his ca­reer.

“Scot­land is a good league and a lot of ex­cel­lent play­ers start their ca­reers there be­fore mov­ing to the Eng­lish Pre­mier League or oth­er coun­tries in Eu­rope,” Archer con­tin­ued. “The lev­el is very good.

“I looked at how Hi­bs were do­ing this sea­son and saw they were in fourth po­si­tion, with some good teams ahead of them, so I know how high the stan­dard will be.”

The transat­lantic link-up will see the sides col­lab­o­rate on scout­ing, play­er de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tional mat­ters and, as well as play­ers from the States try­ing their luck in Scot­land, it is ex­pect­ed that sev­er­al Hi­bs kids will be af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to head to Charleston on loan.

Archer told The Leagues: World Soc­cer Pod­cast: “The part­ner­ship is huge for the fu­ture of the club and I would imag­ine Charleston will get some good play­ers in re­turn to help them out as well as play­ers like my­self get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to Ed­in­burgh.

“It can on­ly be good for the long-term fu­ture of the club.”

Bat­tery star Craw­ford, who en­joyed spells with Mor­ton, Al­loa and Raith be­fore cross­ing the pond in Feb­ru­ary, has al­so linked up with the Hi­bees as he main­tains his fit­ness ahead of the 2021 USL cam­paign.

And Archer hopes Craw­ford can act as a tour guide and help him get used to the Scot­tish twang.

“Rob­bie can help me set­tle and hope­ful­ly he can show me around the city a lit­tle bit,” said the 6ft4ins cen­tre-half. “Plus they talk a lit­tle faster over here, so maybe he can help me with the ac­cent!

“No, I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to show what I can do here and felt like this was an op­por­tu­ni­ty I had to grab.

“I didn’t know this would be a pos­si­bil­i­ty when the [Charleston] sea­son end­ed and had a slight va­ca­tion – but as soon as I heard about this chance, I got straight back in­to my play­ing mind­set!

“It’s just been a case of get­ting used to the time dif­fer­ence – five hours ahead – and catch­ing up with the sleep­ing pat­tern, in prepa­ra­tion.”