Post by QPR Report on Feb 23, 2010 7:27:26 GMT
Very very tough to be one of the kids in this situation
The Times/Tom Dart
The theatre of football’s broken dreams
Emotions run high at the exit trials that represent a last chance for those young hopefuls confronted with football scrapheap
Keeping the dream alive: relatives, friends and scouts pack the sidelines at Bisham Abbey for the FA's exit trials, a footballing X Factor where the players have only a short time to impress
Sixteen is when the possibilities of adult life bud and bloom. Sixteen is the start line for “be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do”. Unless you want to be a professional footballer, because 16 is as likely to be the end as the beginning.
Each February, hundreds of careers finish before they have started. Academies and centres of excellence decide which 16-year-olds will be offered scholarships and which will be released. Clubs typically retain only half, so it is a critical moment for players, the potential break-up of a relationship that may have lasted since they were in primary school.
As a professional contract and the first-team squad become visible on the distant horizon, some will be spun around and pushed in the opposite direction, forced to face a future where they are not a full-time footballer and never will be.
Time to think about A levels, college courses or leaving school to find a job. To contemplate being in a classroom or an office at the same age as prodigies such as Wayne Rooney or Aaron Ramsey were making first-team debuts. Unless . . .
Enter the annual Football League exit trials: another chance, perhaps the last chance. They were held last week at Bisham Abbey near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on Monday, Welbeck College in Leicestershire on Tuesday and Thorp Arch, near Leeds, on Wednesday.
They feel like a reality TV talent show, an X Factor without the showbiz sheen. The wannabes queue up to register, then have a short time to impress sceptical judges in front of a proud and nervous audience of family and friends.
Some 252 players being released attended the three trials, watched by 150 Simon Cowells: scouts from the Football League, the top two Scottish divisions and non-League clubs. Teams from Plymouth Argyle to Ilkeston Town to Aberdeen.
Ninety minutes, broken into three 30-minute games, were all the boys had to impress and win the lifeline of another trial. At Bisham, a former England training base, matches took place simultaneously on three adjacent pitches as scouts and relatives watched from the sidelines.
Strangers were formed into teams based on their preferred positions. The anxiety and intensity jarred with the bucolic riverside setting. There can be no greater pressure than knowing that every touch of the ball could determine your future. Or the lack of touches: if a goalkeeper hardly has a shot to save, how can he impress? Then there’s the hormone lottery. Some boys awaiting a growth spurt had the misfortune to be up against man-sized opponents.
On the far pitch, a mix-up leads to the anguish of an own goal. On the middle a kid wearing the No 9 shirt drives a shot into the top corner from 30 yards and half-a-dozen scouts leaf through the squad sheets they’re holding to find his name and circle it. On the nearest a goalkeeper makes a spectacular save. It doesn’t matter to one talent-spotter from a Coca-Cola Championship club. “He’s too small,” he said. The lad might grow, but with three good young goalkeepers on their books already, they don’t need to take a punt. Like most scouts present, he has come with a firm idea of what he wants: centre backs. He leaves with two contenders.
The trials are useful for smaller clubs, who can fill vacancies with discards from bigger set-ups who are likely to have been well educated. Local grapevines mean that scouts usually know plenty about boys in neighbouring youth teams, but at Bisham, the likes of Torquay United and Exeter City were able to examine players otherwise too distant to appear on the radar.
Tom Spall, the head of youth at Lincoln City, went to all three days. “Sixteen is the big crunch time — do you get a scholarship or don’t you?” he said. “Letting them go is the worst part of the job but we feel we’re quite good with it. We try and let them down gently. You hear some horror stories — getting told by letter, in car parks, those sort of things. You try and have empathy with the boys. I was a boy who didn’t get taken on myself. I was too small.”
Spall sought full backs. “I’m looking for one who a bigger club has let go — we’ll know he’s been in a good system, we’ll know he’s had good education and coaching and hopefully discipline,” he said. “The problem you get sometimes is that you don’t know the boys. Attitude’s massive. We want the boys to be decent people.”
The best-known success story is Theo Robinson, the Huddersfield Town striker. He was released after a season as a schoolboy at Stoke City and picked up by Watford at an exit trial in 2005.
Eventually given a professional contract, he scored 16 times on loan to Hereford United in 2007-08. Last season about 25 per cent of players attending attracted interest from new clubs and about one third of those secured apprenticeships. So about 10 per cent of those on trial prolonged their prospects for at least a year or two.
No one would claim that the trials are perfect, but their value is clear. One last foothold on the cliff edge, new beginnings carved from traumatic endings by the good, the hungry and the lucky.
Case study
• Jack Macfarlane went to the exit trial at Bisham Abbey in the wake of his release by Southampton after four years on their books. The 16-year-old, from Portsmouth, was given the bad news two weeks ago.
• “I got called into a meeting and they told me then,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure before whether I’d be kept on because they didn’t give any indication; I was just told on the spot. I don’t mind anything — I just want to play football. I don’t want to work in an office job. I’ve got a place at college if it doesn’t work out, but it’s an absolute last resort. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I was very, very young.”
• A pacey right back, Jack was told by Southampton that his passing was not consistent enough. He was supported at Bisham by his mother, father and sister. “He’s had a fantastic journey and he’s on the next step,” his mother, Natalie, said.
“Southampton phoned us to let us know they’re having a meeting, we attended and were just told there and then. It’s a difficult time for the boys, they’re going through their exams as well so they’re under ever such a lot of pressure. And we’re Portsmouth fans so it’s a hard time all round.”
• Before the exit trials, Jack had already secured try-outs with Aldershot Town and Bournemouth. He scored in the second of his three matches at Bisham on Monday and came off feeling positive, even though he had to play two games in the unfamiliar position of central midfield. His optimism was justified because at 10pm that day he was called and offered a trial at Exeter City three days later, which went well. He also played and scored in a trial game for Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday, so a fortnight after the disappointment of being let go, his dream of a professional career remains alive.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article7035513.ece
The Times/Tom Dart
The theatre of football’s broken dreams
Emotions run high at the exit trials that represent a last chance for those young hopefuls confronted with football scrapheap
Keeping the dream alive: relatives, friends and scouts pack the sidelines at Bisham Abbey for the FA's exit trials, a footballing X Factor where the players have only a short time to impress
Sixteen is when the possibilities of adult life bud and bloom. Sixteen is the start line for “be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do”. Unless you want to be a professional footballer, because 16 is as likely to be the end as the beginning.
Each February, hundreds of careers finish before they have started. Academies and centres of excellence decide which 16-year-olds will be offered scholarships and which will be released. Clubs typically retain only half, so it is a critical moment for players, the potential break-up of a relationship that may have lasted since they were in primary school.
As a professional contract and the first-team squad become visible on the distant horizon, some will be spun around and pushed in the opposite direction, forced to face a future where they are not a full-time footballer and never will be.
Time to think about A levels, college courses or leaving school to find a job. To contemplate being in a classroom or an office at the same age as prodigies such as Wayne Rooney or Aaron Ramsey were making first-team debuts. Unless . . .
Enter the annual Football League exit trials: another chance, perhaps the last chance. They were held last week at Bisham Abbey near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on Monday, Welbeck College in Leicestershire on Tuesday and Thorp Arch, near Leeds, on Wednesday.
They feel like a reality TV talent show, an X Factor without the showbiz sheen. The wannabes queue up to register, then have a short time to impress sceptical judges in front of a proud and nervous audience of family and friends.
Some 252 players being released attended the three trials, watched by 150 Simon Cowells: scouts from the Football League, the top two Scottish divisions and non-League clubs. Teams from Plymouth Argyle to Ilkeston Town to Aberdeen.
Ninety minutes, broken into three 30-minute games, were all the boys had to impress and win the lifeline of another trial. At Bisham, a former England training base, matches took place simultaneously on three adjacent pitches as scouts and relatives watched from the sidelines.
Strangers were formed into teams based on their preferred positions. The anxiety and intensity jarred with the bucolic riverside setting. There can be no greater pressure than knowing that every touch of the ball could determine your future. Or the lack of touches: if a goalkeeper hardly has a shot to save, how can he impress? Then there’s the hormone lottery. Some boys awaiting a growth spurt had the misfortune to be up against man-sized opponents.
On the far pitch, a mix-up leads to the anguish of an own goal. On the middle a kid wearing the No 9 shirt drives a shot into the top corner from 30 yards and half-a-dozen scouts leaf through the squad sheets they’re holding to find his name and circle it. On the nearest a goalkeeper makes a spectacular save. It doesn’t matter to one talent-spotter from a Coca-Cola Championship club. “He’s too small,” he said. The lad might grow, but with three good young goalkeepers on their books already, they don’t need to take a punt. Like most scouts present, he has come with a firm idea of what he wants: centre backs. He leaves with two contenders.
The trials are useful for smaller clubs, who can fill vacancies with discards from bigger set-ups who are likely to have been well educated. Local grapevines mean that scouts usually know plenty about boys in neighbouring youth teams, but at Bisham, the likes of Torquay United and Exeter City were able to examine players otherwise too distant to appear on the radar.
Tom Spall, the head of youth at Lincoln City, went to all three days. “Sixteen is the big crunch time — do you get a scholarship or don’t you?” he said. “Letting them go is the worst part of the job but we feel we’re quite good with it. We try and let them down gently. You hear some horror stories — getting told by letter, in car parks, those sort of things. You try and have empathy with the boys. I was a boy who didn’t get taken on myself. I was too small.”
Spall sought full backs. “I’m looking for one who a bigger club has let go — we’ll know he’s been in a good system, we’ll know he’s had good education and coaching and hopefully discipline,” he said. “The problem you get sometimes is that you don’t know the boys. Attitude’s massive. We want the boys to be decent people.”
The best-known success story is Theo Robinson, the Huddersfield Town striker. He was released after a season as a schoolboy at Stoke City and picked up by Watford at an exit trial in 2005.
Eventually given a professional contract, he scored 16 times on loan to Hereford United in 2007-08. Last season about 25 per cent of players attending attracted interest from new clubs and about one third of those secured apprenticeships. So about 10 per cent of those on trial prolonged their prospects for at least a year or two.
No one would claim that the trials are perfect, but their value is clear. One last foothold on the cliff edge, new beginnings carved from traumatic endings by the good, the hungry and the lucky.
Case study
• Jack Macfarlane went to the exit trial at Bisham Abbey in the wake of his release by Southampton after four years on their books. The 16-year-old, from Portsmouth, was given the bad news two weeks ago.
• “I got called into a meeting and they told me then,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure before whether I’d be kept on because they didn’t give any indication; I was just told on the spot. I don’t mind anything — I just want to play football. I don’t want to work in an office job. I’ve got a place at college if it doesn’t work out, but it’s an absolute last resort. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I was very, very young.”
• A pacey right back, Jack was told by Southampton that his passing was not consistent enough. He was supported at Bisham by his mother, father and sister. “He’s had a fantastic journey and he’s on the next step,” his mother, Natalie, said.
“Southampton phoned us to let us know they’re having a meeting, we attended and were just told there and then. It’s a difficult time for the boys, they’re going through their exams as well so they’re under ever such a lot of pressure. And we’re Portsmouth fans so it’s a hard time all round.”
• Before the exit trials, Jack had already secured try-outs with Aldershot Town and Bournemouth. He scored in the second of his three matches at Bisham on Monday and came off feeling positive, even though he had to play two games in the unfamiliar position of central midfield. His optimism was justified because at 10pm that day he was called and offered a trial at Exeter City three days later, which went well. He also played and scored in a trial game for Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday, so a fortnight after the disappointment of being let go, his dream of a professional career remains alive.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article7035513.ece
