HEAD coach Mark Cooper is unlikely to dress up as Santa Claus at the Forest Green Christmas party but he’s certainly transforming broken toys into shiny gems at the League Two table-toppers.

Chucked on the football scrapheap by Birmingham City and Swansea City respectively, Dom Bernard and Lewis Thomas have found their footballing feet at Forest Green with Cooper and director of football Richard Hughes offering the talented duo contract extensions this week as their careers move in an upward direction.

“Gone are the days of Forest Green spending ridiculous amounts of wages,” revealed Cooper.

“Everyone knows what our process is, majority are young players that we’ve taken, broken toys that we have to try and fix and put them in our team, and let them make some mistakes, but turn them into good players."

Watch Mark Cooper discuss the contract extensions handed out to Lewis Thomas and Dom Bernard.