Last night saw Joe Hart make his full debut for the England first team when he came on at half-time to replace David James.

It was great news for the young keeper who progressed through the Town youth system and reflects well on Shrewsbury Town. The deal that saw Joe move from Town to Man City was made up of a payment up front, payments on a certain number of appearances and another amount for a full England cap.

ShrewsWeb spoke to Town Managing Director Rob Bickerton about the great news for Joe: "The deal that was done when Joe went to Man City had an element which would be triggered when Joe got his full cap for England.

"Everyone associated with Shrewsbury Town Football Club and anyone who had an involvement in the development of Joe Hart should take great pride. He's a local lad; he went to a local school and went through our young player development, played over 50 games for Shrewsbury and then moved on.

"I think the news is something of great pride for Joe Hart and for Shrewsbury as a whole. Joe is 21 years of age and has now played for England and as David James has showing goalkeepers can have long and successful careers so Joe has the potential to be the England goalkeeper for a very long time."

The end of the regular season is always a quite time for clubs and is the time that players and managers usually take their holidays. That means a slow time for news coming out of the club but there is still a lot of work going on behind the scenes to prepare for next season: "Behind the scenes a lot of my working day is spent looking at the player opportunities that Paul is interested in, we've got a number of meetings this week set-up with players and agents.

"It is a quiet time as players have been on holiday, as has our manager, and now it's when things start in earnest as all clubs are looking to put their squads together for when they come back in early July.

"We are also working very hard on the stadium naming rights and it would be nice to think that before the season starts we will be a position to announce the name of the stadium."

The commercial and ticketing sides of the club are still busy with the preparations for the new season. The club shop has been building up to their summer sale and Rob revealed a few of the special offers that are now available. Season ticket sales have been good and the number already sold went past the 1000 mark on Friday: "We've been reducing items in the shop over the past few weeks in preparation for the summer sale in the Clubshop. We are also having a price reduction on A-Line garments in the shop and there are some great savings.

"Adult shirts will be sold during the month of June for £15, kids shirts are £10, shorts are £3 each or 5 pairs for £10 and socks are £2 a pair. This helps us to get through the close season as we are not playing matches and I would urge fans to come along to the shop to get some bargains before their summer holidays.

"It is also worth mentioning that season ticket sales on Friday went through the 1000 mark and that is great news.

"We've got the early purchase scheme in place over the new few weeks and we are expecting to be really busy up until then.

"If you are planning to renew your season ticket then my advice would be not to leave it until the last minute as there will be a queue. If there are queues on the last day we will stay open until those queues are gone even if that means staying until midnight."

The preseason games have already been announced and the team's preparations are in place for when they return on 3rd July. The fixtures are out in a couple of weeks and that then allows peoples preparations to really start: "The manager is very keen to get the pre-season right and when we play our first game we want to come out of the traps running.

"We have the tough training trip to Spain and then some challenging matches against West Brom and Stoke City.

"The other thing that I am really looking forward to with great excitement is the release of the fixtures on the 16th June. It's always exciting to see what the first game will be and to see when the other key games are in the season.

"I understand that Shrewsbury have always requested that the first game be played away because of the Flower Show. That isn't the case this year so it might be quite nice to start the new season with a home game."