Youth Team 2013 - 2014

[Banging_Them_In]

Just an observation. Not a critism of club, etc....,..

How is it, that all the Youth team come from London, Cyprus and the island of Ireland ?

Just the goalkeeper from Devon.

[Dave]

Lack of talent B-T-I , if there was anything good enough around Devon we would along with Plymouth and Exeter would try to sign them.

[PhilGull]

I think the youth team is still fairly new. As I understand it the younger age groups are full of locals kids but the older age groups have had to be filled with whatever random scraps we could find, either let go or missed by other clubs.
Hopefully in a year or two we will start to see the youth system push through some good players who have come through the whole of our system instead of coming in at a later age.

[Dave]

Our current youth set up was started in 2007, our U8-U14 is packed full of local kids and allways has been, Geoff Harrop was brought into the club purley because we were not developing local talent worthy enough of being awarded a youth professional contract, and thats why the direction of our youth set up changed, by adding development centres for U8-U14, and more and more bringing in young players from London and abroad.

We do not have an U15 team, when the acadmey kids get to U14 age group it becomes very serious for them, only the very best, what the club think are the cream of the crop, which can be no players at all go through to the U16 team from U14's , and thats the problem as said very few are actually good enough.