BY the time Dael Fry's new Middlesbrough contract nears its end, the defender will have been at his hometown club for more than two decades.

Fry continues to live his dream at the club he's supported all of his life and while the Berwick Hills-born defender has already won promotion once with Boro, that was when he was a teenager and on the fringes of the first team.

Now, he's very much a leading senior figure in the Boro dressing room - and as he looks around at Rockliffe, he sees a club where everything is geared for a return to the top flight.

"The ambition is to get to the Premier League," said Fry, who this week signed a new three-year deal with Boro, keeping him at the club until at least the end of the 2025/26 season.

"The year we got promoted I'd only played 10 games in the season. There's nothing I want more than to be playing for my hometown club in the Premier League. For me and my family, that would be a great achievement.

"I'm delighted to be here, with the manager and all of his staff. It's a really good team environment, the togetherness in the squad is fantastic. We have all the attributes really to get back in the Premier League."

Fry was seven when he first joined Boro and still has to pinch himself that almost 20 years on he's now a key figure in the first team and has been for a number of seasons.

Fry is grateful to everyone who has played a part in getting him to this stage - nobody more so than his dad.

"When I was growing up there was a lot of people more talented than me and when I look back it's just me out of that group left," Fry told the club website.

"It's crazy to think I was the one to come through. It took a lot of hard work and I must say I have to thank my dad, when I finished school he was taking me up and down, spending all that money on petrol.

"I was here an hour before everyone else, that's down to my dad, he had me in the sports hall kicking balls, it's credit to him."

He was a kid when he joined and just 17 when he made his debut but Fry is now a "man" in the Boro dressing room.

He says: "I'm a senior player now. It's weird because when are you a senior player and a young lad? But I'm a man now, I'm a senior in the dressing room. There's a lot of people who are younger than me and I remember being that young player.

"It is tough when you're new into the dressing room, sometimes you're a bit quiet when you're in a group of men, but I see myself as a man definitely."

READ MORE:

He uses his experience of developing through the ranks to help the youngsters who are currently looking to make the step into the first team fold, and played alongside plenty of those hopefuls in the friendly at Hartlepool last week.

He said: "In pre-season a lot of lads are getting their chance, I remember when I got my chance how nervous you are.

"That's your chance, if you do well in pre-season you put a thought in the manager's head. You could see some of the nerves (at Hartlepool) but when they got on the ball and actually showed what they can do and believe in yourself, you can do whatever you want."