Youth Development

Is our youth development working ?

Here is a list of our youngsters that have achieved a SL debut over the past 12 years;

Player
2004 None

2005 Andy Braceck
Steve Pickersgill
Chris Riley

2006 Ben Harrison
Mike Cooper
Kevin Penny

2007 Anthony Jerram
Lee Mitchell
Matty Blythe

2008 Taylor Welch
Adam Neal

2009 Tyrone McCarthy
Alex Thompson

2010 Rhys Evans
Rhys Williams

2011 Gareth O'Brien

2012 Ben Currie
Brad Dwyer
James Laithwaite (HKR)

2013 Glen Riley
Danny Bridge
Ben Evans (Bradford)
Ryan Shaw (London)
James Mendeika (London)

2014 Gene Ormsby
Joe Philbin
George King
Toby King

2015 Declan Patton
Jack Johnson
Sam Wilde

Over the past 6 years the U20/19's have never finished outside the top 4 in the league and have been first 3 times, winning the GF once and contesting 3 finals ( invariably against Wigan). You could say that is a very healthy record and that our youth development is looking very successful. Certainly the club has had a major push over the past few years to raise standards, bring in juniors from the rest of the country, re-connect with local schools and clubs, and to provide high quality training facilities and coaches. On the other hand, the academy only exists for one purpose - to provide high quality players for the first team squad and by that measure we have not been quite as successful (as yet)

For the past four years you can see a marked increase in the number of youngsters getting a taste of SL - nearly 4/year. However we have also waved goodbye to quite a lot of the players as well. From 2013 only Ben Evans remains whilst the rest have been playing at Championship level (I think Shaw may be at HKR next year). The 2014 and 15 players are still with the club and it is still too early to know whether they are going to make that last final jump to becoming either a first team player.

Have we had a good return from the academy ? I suspect there will be lots of different views on this as everyone will have a favourite player or individual that they believe has lots of potential. Personally I think we have probably produced mainly 'squad players' such as Matty Blythe, Tyke and GOB. Will Rhys Evans and James Laithwaite make it past 'squad player' - they are already 23-24 yrs old and no longer fresh youngsters. I would argue that at minimum we need one player each year that becomes a first team fixture, and the only one on the books atm that I see is Ben Currie. At the moment SJM is footing the bill for half of a new team, but you can not predict who will own the club in the future. I think we need to see more of a dividend from the youth system - at the moment we are still talking about youngsters that are 'good prospects' and a system that 'is starting to bring players through'.