Darren Royle has described the loss of Oldham Athletic's academy status as "heartbreaking" and said he fought to keep it going.

Latics' chief executive gathered support from Oldham MPs Angela Rayner, Debbie Abrahams and Jim McMahon to lobby against having to lose the club's long-standing Category 3 academy, which ran from under nines to under 16s and consisted of more than 100 players and more than 30 coaching staff.

Under English Football League rules, any team relegated from the EFL has a two-year window in which to win promotion and preserve their academy status. After that, clubs who fail to get back up can retain a youth set-up if they wish, but they lose the financial support and protection, which includes teams being compensated if any of their youth players are signed by another club.

It was that protection in particular that Royle wants the rules to change on.

"The Premier League in 2013 came out with the EPPP, which is the Elite Player Performance Plan, and it was the programme set up to really revolutionise youth development in this country all with the target of getting better run academies from Category 1, which is Premier League level, to Category 4, which is where we are probably now," he explained.

"We had a Category 3 academy that was regulated and registered with the EFL and funded from the Premier League via the EFL, and what happens when you get relegated from the Football League - you don't have a choice, which is why every club that has been relegated and been out of the Football League for two years has had to give up that model. And it's important I say 'that model'.

"We are not regulated or registered or recognised as a Category 3 EPPP academy any more.

"That's something that we've tried to change the rules and regulations on. We've had our three local MPs jointly sign a letter that we sent to the Premier League and we've also written directly to the Premier League to lobby.

"I've spoken to the PFA, from a youth player care side of things, and also via the MPs around looking at the football regulator coming in around 'is this surely a bad thing - we're shutting an academy down because they're not allowing us to run it any more.

"Unfortunately we weren't able to change the regulations or the rules.

"The same thing has happened to Chesterfield, Notts County, Stockport, Tranmere, when they all dropped out of the league, if you're out for two years that's it, you have to close it down.

"That's heartbreaking. It's under nines to under 16s schoolboy programme, so there are about 110 players in there.

"They're protected, as in they're signed up with us in the EPPP academy. As soon as you become unregulated and not part of that programme you don't have any protection. They can go wherever they want, they can get poached by whoever they want, and basically you would be funding something that costs nearly £600,000 a year for the benefit of other people."

Royle added: "We're really sad and devastated that that part of the academy and the model has been closed. We tried our best leveraging contacts and brilliant help from the politicians - I've got to thank them - but to no avail.

"Angela Rayner, Jim McMahon and Debbie Abrahams all signed a joint letter. They've been great and really helpful and we couldn't have asked for more. The letter was really compelling, appealing to the Premier League to review their regulations on this.

"The average tenure for a club in this league is four years, so really a five-year window would be more realistic. Or even a window where you might not get the funding but you get the protection, so you still run the school boys' or school girls' programme as things move on. But the protection is there. It's not an incentive but a protection so that all that money that you put into running those coaching sessions and programmes, if one of the big clubs comes in and pinches a player there's some cover there.

"The clock started ticking when the club was relegated, and I always knew that if we didn't get promoted this year then it was going to come to this, and the staff did as well. It's been difficult the last 12 months for the staff."