Under 17 youth team - Slough Town

[grandad]

Game against Liverpool was nothing to do with STFC, they justed hosted, and got great attendance. I was there too. It was semi of English Schools under 15 cup. Got rid of my prog, wonder if any of the 24 kids on display made it. Know Slough captained by Paul Walker(?) who went onto Brentford, could have done more but missed out. Not sure of others.

[Guest Anonymous]

It was the Final actually the second leg.

Walker went to Brenford ( which to me was a waste for the English Schools captain)and Brian McDermot went to Arsenal( quite succesfully)

[grandad]

I stand corrected, I can admit to being wrong some times!

[Guest Adrian Browne]

I have just been reading this thread, and as some of you will know, I work for the local college who in the last few years has been operating with Hayes and Yeading (A completely different argument altogether!)If anyone would like to talk to me about htis relationship then feel free to do so next time we meet.

 

My main point is, clubs like Slough need to, and will thrive on having a credible youth team, you only need to look at Farnborough Aldershot etc to see what the benefits are. We at Hayes and Yeading have been recriuting from the Slough area for a number of years, a number of those players are now playing first team football around the non-league level. Even players as recent as Dave Thomas and Rhys Price came from our academy, which is based at the college, and other players such as Johnny Gray, Chris Robinson and James Suarez came from this system.

 

The team need to be consistanly challenged in order to make progress, dont get me wrong, a number of Tony's side are good, but our lads here would murder them, and that is just down to the fact that we as coaches get more time to spend with them monitoring and developing not just skill and technique, but also physical developoment, speed, agility etc. A move to the more competitive Allied counties league will hpefully raise their level of play and equip them better in a transition to first team football, but again the gulf is massive.

 

The best solution is to align the youth team to a college academy where the young players can get these benfits I have mentioned (another arguement about east berks I know!) get a reserve team in the capital league (less games, more adaptable) to aid their growth, as well as keep some of the fringe players happy, so the young players can get that vital experience form such players.

 

Anyway, this could go on forever, main point is I am here, if anyone would like to pick my brains as to a succesful model - then feel free to do so.

 

[Guest Adrian Browne]

Gary, I know there are spelling mistakes but its home-time from work and I type too fast without using the old 'spell check'!!!

 

;-)

[BFR]

I watched a game between Hayes and Yeading youth and W*king Youth at Brunel last year and was pretty impressed with the standard.