Post by QPR Report on Apr 1, 2009 6:36:29 GMT
Don't think many fans would have a problem with this! 
Stuart James/The Guardian
Time to give menial chores back to football apprenticesHaving had to clean Glenn Hoddle's boots, I can agree with Frank Lampard that young players benefit from such duties
There was nothing enjoyable about cleaning the gullies next to the baths that Nicky Summerbee had earlier urinated in or, for that matter, picking a pair of slips up off the dressing room floor that had more skid marks than the starting grid at Silverstone. Yet not one of the eight trainees I enrolled alongside at Swindon Town in 1992 resented being told to carry out the jobs that, as far as we were concerned, went hand in hand with being a football apprentice. Those duties instilled discipline, generated wonderful camaraderie and, most of all, would help you appreciate the opportunity you had been given if and when you were lucky enough to turn professional.
Having been released 12 months after I had signed my first and only professional contract at Swindon Town in 1994, I've no idea what it feels like to be playing at the top level and earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, like Frank Lampard and John Terry. But, having spent two years doing everything from scrubbing dressing room floors to polishing boots in between all the football drills, I can certainly appreciate why Lampard and Terry believe that the young players coming through now would benefit from travelling back in time to an era where their hard work was not confined to the training pitch.
"There are good young pros out there but nowadays it's made much too easy for them," said Lampard yesterday. "We're all lucky to be where we are, leading nice lifestyles, but that lifestyle is coming earlier and earlier. The lads are forgetting the hard work that needs to be done to earn that lifestyle … Players don't clean boots any more and I'm a big advocate of that. Me and John [Terry] always complain that they should be cleaning boots because it was a great learning curve for us, being told off by Julian Dicks and having the boots thrown back at you. Once that's gone, an edge can be taken off."
It is easy to picture football managers and coaches all over the country nodding their heads at those remarks. In many ways cleaning boots was one of the easier jobs … unless you were in charge of the manager's, of course. That misfortune was mine at Swindon, when I dipped my hand into the tub being passed among the trainees and pulled out the name 'Glenn Hoddle'. A difficult task was made harder still when Hoddle passed me a pair of suede boots (yes, suede) early in the season and said, "These'll test you." In fairness, I also had a touch of good fortune, when I selected the former Coventry City winger Dave Bennett, whose broken leg during pre-season helped to reduce the workload.
Returning to those days is not as easy as it might appear, however. Clubs are no longer able to enforce the kind of regime that was commonplace years ago because, as one current academy coach explained to me this morning, there were concerns (it can only be assumed from people with no experience of football) that apprentices were being exploited. The same coach pointed out another potential problem that did not exist in the past. "The top players wear a new pair of boots virtually every game and the training pitches are so good that there is next to nothing to clean anyway," he added.
Even so, it is difficult to believe that mopping a few corridors, putting a couple of divots back into the ground at half-time and collecting the kit from the laundry – all jobs on the rota at the County Ground 15 years ago along with the boot-cleaning duties – would do any harm to a teenager seeking to break into football. Indeed, in my opinion, those chores, no matter how mundane, are more likely to provide a valuable grounding at a time when the average supporter and top-flight professional have never been further apart in terms of not only their financial position but also their understanding of the world outside of football.
There may also be a silver lining for the academy player come Christmas. That was the time of year when the professionals were expected to hand over a "tip" as a token of their gratitude. Hoddle gave me £20, which was almost a week's wages for a YTS players back then (£27.50 a week plus a £4 bonus for a win). In hindsight, it was a lot of work for that but it never seemed like it at that time. Something tells me, however, that the current generation would feel very differently about picking up a few quid to clean someone else's boots.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/mar/31/apprentice-cleaning-boots-frank-lampard
Stuart James/The Guardian
Time to give menial chores back to football apprenticesHaving had to clean Glenn Hoddle's boots, I can agree with Frank Lampard that young players benefit from such duties
There was nothing enjoyable about cleaning the gullies next to the baths that Nicky Summerbee had earlier urinated in or, for that matter, picking a pair of slips up off the dressing room floor that had more skid marks than the starting grid at Silverstone. Yet not one of the eight trainees I enrolled alongside at Swindon Town in 1992 resented being told to carry out the jobs that, as far as we were concerned, went hand in hand with being a football apprentice. Those duties instilled discipline, generated wonderful camaraderie and, most of all, would help you appreciate the opportunity you had been given if and when you were lucky enough to turn professional.
Having been released 12 months after I had signed my first and only professional contract at Swindon Town in 1994, I've no idea what it feels like to be playing at the top level and earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, like Frank Lampard and John Terry. But, having spent two years doing everything from scrubbing dressing room floors to polishing boots in between all the football drills, I can certainly appreciate why Lampard and Terry believe that the young players coming through now would benefit from travelling back in time to an era where their hard work was not confined to the training pitch.
"There are good young pros out there but nowadays it's made much too easy for them," said Lampard yesterday. "We're all lucky to be where we are, leading nice lifestyles, but that lifestyle is coming earlier and earlier. The lads are forgetting the hard work that needs to be done to earn that lifestyle … Players don't clean boots any more and I'm a big advocate of that. Me and John [Terry] always complain that they should be cleaning boots because it was a great learning curve for us, being told off by Julian Dicks and having the boots thrown back at you. Once that's gone, an edge can be taken off."
It is easy to picture football managers and coaches all over the country nodding their heads at those remarks. In many ways cleaning boots was one of the easier jobs … unless you were in charge of the manager's, of course. That misfortune was mine at Swindon, when I dipped my hand into the tub being passed among the trainees and pulled out the name 'Glenn Hoddle'. A difficult task was made harder still when Hoddle passed me a pair of suede boots (yes, suede) early in the season and said, "These'll test you." In fairness, I also had a touch of good fortune, when I selected the former Coventry City winger Dave Bennett, whose broken leg during pre-season helped to reduce the workload.
Returning to those days is not as easy as it might appear, however. Clubs are no longer able to enforce the kind of regime that was commonplace years ago because, as one current academy coach explained to me this morning, there were concerns (it can only be assumed from people with no experience of football) that apprentices were being exploited. The same coach pointed out another potential problem that did not exist in the past. "The top players wear a new pair of boots virtually every game and the training pitches are so good that there is next to nothing to clean anyway," he added.
Even so, it is difficult to believe that mopping a few corridors, putting a couple of divots back into the ground at half-time and collecting the kit from the laundry – all jobs on the rota at the County Ground 15 years ago along with the boot-cleaning duties – would do any harm to a teenager seeking to break into football. Indeed, in my opinion, those chores, no matter how mundane, are more likely to provide a valuable grounding at a time when the average supporter and top-flight professional have never been further apart in terms of not only their financial position but also their understanding of the world outside of football.
There may also be a silver lining for the academy player come Christmas. That was the time of year when the professionals were expected to hand over a "tip" as a token of their gratitude. Hoddle gave me £20, which was almost a week's wages for a YTS players back then (£27.50 a week plus a £4 bonus for a win). In hindsight, it was a lot of work for that but it never seemed like it at that time. Something tells me, however, that the current generation would feel very differently about picking up a few quid to clean someone else's boots.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/mar/31/apprentice-cleaning-boots-frank-lampard
