A post for all colours across the North East. In light of today where 2 brothers played prem football and 2 got mom. What do we both need to do as clubs to keep the talent here? Or is it just as simple as the big boys will hoover up the best?
As a SAFC supporter you hope that we get our scouting and recruitment sorted and strengthened as a matter of urgency , the big clubs are taking kids as young as seven and eight in to their academies . The most important thing is to get them engaged and involved so that they want to stay , the bigger clubs will try anything to try to prise them away before they sign professional contracts at seventeen . We have to show them that they can have a better chance of progressing , that opportunities will come if they are good enough - make them feel important and wanted . Their is still a lot of talent in the North East make sure it's us that find it and more importantly keep them .
My mates son was at our academy and reckoned at one point the lad was eating a lot of pasta before every game for the energy, only 13 bit started getting fat. Then couldn’t shift the weight so really hampered his chances of progressing in the region.
As far as NUFC go we have had a terrible record in the past 30 years (since 1990 when we had Gazza, Beardsley, Waddle for England and Shearer in the youth set up elsewhere...). Longstaff (S) was a bright light last year and the talk was that Matty had been the better player at youth level. The idea that we had 4 players who came through our youth set-up on the pitch for our matches this season(Dummett and Carroll being the other ones) is great but doesn't change the fact we've been terrible for years. We happen to have a pair of brothers come through, it's the exception rather than the norm for us whereas plenty of other teams a similar size to us have been providing a string of players to the International set up for years.
Modern kids are progeny of fat lazy parents whose idea of cuisine comes from an Iceland store and exercise is lifting the remote. That's why the developing nations are the hothouse for talent
Or maybe most "developing nations" have larger populations and with fewer opportunities now that the slave trade has all but vanished along with the coal mines, where i believe all you had to do was shout down one to raise a football team, those days are sadly gone..
