By Midfielder
November 19th 2009 @ 2:31am
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Buckley has kept the young stars in the game
Few commentators have picked up on the excellent job Ben Buckley has done in stopping the Brain Drain of young footballers to other codes.
So many elite players in other codes had their grounding in football. A series of measures has resulted in an almost zero slippage of elites to other codes today.
Let’s look to see what he has done.
1. Set up the Under 14 international team and Under 13 state teams, meaning a place in a national side with good coaches was hard to leave.
2. A national talent recognition system, meaning it was harder to play favourites.
3. The national youth league, thus the best from about 15 to 20 in A-League clubs.
4. Taking the state based sports institution and getting the football part of the state sporting institutes under the control of the A-League clubs, thus creating mini academies.
5. The application of the FIFA rules applying to people under 18, although this has had some issues
6. The national training of the elite 25 coaches, all recent A-League or returning from Europe players, who can command respect to coach our best 600 players from 8 to 17.
This must be costing a small fortune, but the rewards in a few years for football will a huge talent pool. Remember, too, the Mariners Centre of Football Excellence Academy and NSW Football Academies, plus Association and State team rep players would get added to this pool.
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(12)
whiskeymac said | November 19th 2009 @ 9:39am | Report comment
it’s where the futures at.
Midfielder said | November 19th 2009 @ 10:59am | Report comment
SBS have two excellent clips on what Han Burger has done and is doing. Even if not a football fan but someone who loves to see strategic management it is worth watching … goes for is a tad over 2 minutes it. http://player.sbs.com.au/twg#/twg_08/AussieFocus/AussieFocus/playlist/FFA-Skills-Acquisition/
Will show the second clip in the next post
Realfootball said | November 19th 2009 @ 11:00am | Report comment
I think that what this season’s attendances have shown is that raising the standard of the League is really the only way to grow the sport and for financial reasons the talent can’t come from overseas.
Who are the most exciting players to watch in the League? For me its Leckie, Zullo, Oar, Minniecon, Danning, Jamieson, Brosque and Archie Thompson. Six of this eight are under 22.
No coincidence. Now we need FTA tv to make stars of them while they are still here, not after they have left.
Midfielder said | November 19th 2009 @ 11:01am | Report comment
The Second Clip http://player.sbs.com.au/twg#/twg_08/ExpertView/ExpertView/playlist/Football-Focus-Skills-Acquisition/ over eight minutes and shows the degree of planning behind the training and the degree of almost academic learning is built into the various age levels…
Midfielder said | November 19th 2009 @ 11:04am | Report comment
Real
Watch a kid on the coast called Matthew Lewis he is no half bad… also our new midfield paring of Travis & weeMac both 22.
Realfootball said | November 19th 2009 @ 1:05pm | Report comment
Hopefully I will see Lewis at Skilled Park on Dec 5. As for Travis and McG, terrific players who would start in any team in the League. At this rate CCM are going to finish the season as the ballplaying team of the A League. Who would have thought at around game 1?
Midfielder said | November 19th 2009 @ 3:28pm | Report comment
Real
I did and keep saying so even wrote a thread about it and got laughed at … and everything you can say was said about me … but I will post agian what I said in mid July this year…. has not all come true but …
My post of mid July
HMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm if you listen to the media, the Mariners, are a tad above cavemen status when it comes to playing..
Heard it all before, Fozza analysis was one lower English league defender signed, coached by a Scotchman … Wow we are gone… NOTHING could be further from the truth ……..as FFC Mariner only if we change our name to Athletico Gosford, would the media give us some cred.
Our true position, we have signed five players and still have a number on trial.. Signings to date are Michael McGlinchey (an Attacking mid /striker), Shane Huke (defensive mid), Nick Travis ( box to box mid), Chris Doig (central defender), Matthew Lewis (youth league mid), plus we still have a number of people trialling.
McGlinchy was offered a place at Man U & Celtic just over three years ago, took Celtic and has played for Scotland under 20. Injury has kept him out the last couple of years … Travis will be the surprise packet of the league fast, great pass ,and again young only 22. Both players attempting to rebuild there stalled career after injury. Many football folk have judged Huke as a potential Halroo he is very good at closing play down an excellent signing. Doin & Travis have an essential ingredient all clubs need and the Mariners have lacked to date. They are players with a little mongrel in em. Returning from injury, Elrich, in 2006 the next on the plane to the WC has a lot to prove. Mrdja another highly skilful player, said to be free from injury this season.
We will make the finals and our midfield is very similar to the Man U midfield that took the treble..
Beckham, Scholes, Keerne, Giggs … Elrich, Travis, Huke & Caceres… Elrich will provide those balls into a fast running attack of Simon & McGlinchy, Travis is like Scholes a great box to box mid with a little mongrel. Huke like Keno our defensive hub, and finally Caceres to attack and run at players like Giggs…
It is an interesting and has gone under the radar that the Mariners have signed two players.. three years ago…. who where possible bench players in the EPL.. but their careers as I said before stalled by injury.. our medical staff believe they have recovered. … This strategy of using young players attempting to prove they are EPL ready could or will add a dimension to the Mariners the like of which the A-League has never seen before..
Meaning we have two players in Travis, McGlinchy who will be playing to prove they are ready to return to the EPL.. Huke also wanting to go back to Europe… add the return of Elrich who wants his Socceroo right mid position back … the Mariner signings have the potential to tear the A-League apart.
In closing every year we are written off as having no hope .. this year it has been a constant attack.. we don’t mind being underdogs …. We do tire of the some of the Media and there analysis .. Not because there may not be some grains of truth in what is said ………more when things are done very well no comments are made….The perfect example the Mariners Centre of Excellence a 60 + million investment in technical improvement rarely if ever talked about.
I remember a chant from Hal 1 that is as true today as it was in Hal 1… It goes …
“”” Nobody rates Us
WE don’t Care”””
dasilva said | November 19th 2009 @ 5:06pm | Report comment
Nice article Midfielder
The next long term step is the 2nd division
Which I think will be even more critical to youth develop then even the youth league. It has been shown that playing against adults is the way to go in improving players.
NUFCMVFC said | November 19th 2009 @ 5:11pm | Report comment
SSG’s were implemented under Buckley’s tenure, despite some issues that Fozzie seemed to have with the detailed aspects of what Baan put in place, he seems happy with modifications that Berger made. Either way, we are moving in the right direction and there is often a bit of refining that needs doing, it is usually hard to go from nothing to then have a perfect system in place, a bit like how written documents need a few drafts, but we should end up with a very good structure and culture in due course
We certainly are improving in the area, despite some of the issues regarding A League crowds and profitability issues, in some respects some round averages have been on a par with the NRL. But what does seperate Football form Basketball is that the high level of participation can better be translated into a viable career. This isn’t necassarily pinned to the Socceroos either, although it helps. the 2002 World Cup and the very high interest + ratings proves this, mullticultural nature of football fraternity basically means that as well as Australia, everyone has some kind of second team they also pay attention too, as well as glamour of EPL + La Liga and Serie A, interest in football won’t wane in the same way as the NBA kind of has. So while there woudl be issues with the A League and many things could be better, “football” as a whole would be a bit of a different story
Things are definetely improving in the youth development area and hopefully Coaching as well. Hopefully this in time leads to a much better quality A League competition. Not only that, but also let’s hope it means a much better ratio and frequency of players then able to move onto Europe and break into first teams efficiently and get a fair amount of game time, eg not like people like Djite where once thye have moved they have struggled for game time. This would require good grounding in some of the “basics”
I guess you could say that part iof the benefit of having a “Dutch” based system, is that hopefully it would mean that Australian youth would be good pick ups for Dutch clubs like say FC Twente, if we have good grounding our players would be able to break into it better, but siilar to how their own good players are then able to move onto top Euro leagues and develop into World Clas players, hopefully it would be similar for us. IN this sense it would be good if a bit of a culture developes where we become either a bit of a feeder league of sorts, or rather that a trend develops where Australian players move to Dutch clubs in the same way there is a trend for Australian players to traditionally move to slightly lower tier English clubs.
At the same time I guess there is a need to be careful, not to prevent a Kewell going to Leeds, but that needs to be ablanced out by preventing people going to Europena clubs Academies and getting lost. Interestinlly, those who train through Premier League club Academies very often don’t make it and end up being stuck with lower tier football. There are some exceptions, but in NUFC’s case a lot of the more potent ones like Ameobi and Chopra are usually squad players at best in the EPL and are better suited to the Championship. But Australians have a different course via the Continent they can take now
As far as player drain to other codes goes, the enhanced youth development pathway goes hand in hand with the World Cup inspiring people to want to be football stars like Cahill, so there is some top tier profile now that wasn’t there before bar “Kewell and Viduka”, plus there is a much more noticeable National League with an attached youth league which means there is a viable and discernible pathway.
Finally there is Asia, even if you don’t “make it” as a European superstar, there is still a good identifiable chance to make a decent amount of money in the Asian leagues. Allsopp, Jade North and the Griffiths are all good examples of this, they make much more money then mayn AFL and NRL players despite nothaving near as much profile + not being in the very top echelon of Australian players in their own sport
Midfielder said | November 19th 2009 @ 7:05pm | Report comment
NUFCMVFC
The for the above post you make some excellent points and I agree with them all..
The aim of this article is to highlight that Football is now keeping its elite from an early age… This has never been the case before some of the better know players in other codes… Steve & Mark Waugh played for NSW in Football in the U 15. Steve said once he would have preferred Football but their was nowhere to go.. The Johns Brothers in RL played rep football and RL … Matthew Johns said in an interview he preferred football but there was nowhere to go.. Andrew Entinghousen RL again played for Olympic U 16 team .. left for RL… In union Matthew Bourke swapped again as there was no career in football… in AFL to there have been many AFL greats who switched as there was no football career or decent coaching or a fair selection process…
With Football keeping its best 600 to 1, 000 players Football will create a pool of talent to enrich it’s domestic competition. Who knows we may even get back some who left..
The drift to other sports was huge as I said some have suggested as high as 40%… to other codes or stopped playing. But recently ( last 18 months) Football has not lost any of its élites..
A practical example … Kings school in Sydney is a huge private boys GPS school, has a huge rugby tradition. A mate of mine sons goes there as did he and his brothers.. What was common from 14 to 18 was the fastest boys in the school played in the outside backs in the school rugby teams… Fast forward today the 10 fastest boys in the school ( 14 to 18) all play in the schools football teams…Even 6 years ago these boys would have been in the rugby teams…
My personal belief is this will cause over time a change in the player depth in Football and lesson player depth in other codes… AFL & recently RL have reasonable records in youth development RU is mixed at the private schools first rate at park level not so good.. Cricket well it is only one team these days…
Another example on the coast both Matty Simon (22) & Matthew Lewis (17) would have played RL (you will get to here a lot about Matthew Lewis as the years go bye our little ace, just not quite strong enough yet but getting there… but he is good enough to push out Hutch) But Lewis would make a great half in league and Matty Simon a great running centre or second rower..
With two teams in Melbourne the same will apply what is in football will stay with football…
agga78 said | November 20th 2009 @ 7:35am | Report comment
When Kevin Sheedy at West Sydney and the Gold Coast team were making announcements about the new franchises in the AFL they both mentioned that West Sydney and Gold Coast will alllow young Gold Coast and West Sydney athletes to earn 200k a year playing AFL as a lure to get them to start playing AFL, and there is nothing wrong with that at all, telling kids you can earn big money playing AFL. What have Ben Buckley, FFA or the new A league teams pitched to the young talented footballers who are in those areas, about the benefits or rewards for sticking with or starting to play football. Answer nothing. I have never heard Football communicate to the young athletes male or female playing football around Australia the benefit of sticking with football, there are so many more reasons to play football and the rewards are much greater than merely getting 200k a year,for example young players get to compete internationally from 13, you can play in the Olympics, the World Cup, ACL, ECL, and there are many different leagues to play in. But this is never said to the public, at every opportunity the FFA should be telling everybody the benefits of starting or sticking with football, something Ben Buckley and his team should think about.
Teffers said | November 20th 2009 @ 3:52pm | Report comment
I agree that the Socceroos should be used as a lure to firstly get people into the game and then keep them there. Next year the Socceroos are going to South Africa to play in arguably the biggest sporting event in the world, yet you hardly hear a peep out of the FFA about the potential for “you” to be a Socceroo.
I remember the add campaign in the 90’s after the Wallabies won the RUWC; “I wanna be a Wallaby”! What about Cahill or Kewel saying in an ad’ “I’m a Socceroo, you can be too”! Lame I know, but you get the hint. The FFA doesn’t seem to be using the World Cup qualification to its full extent. The AFL is branding itself as Australia’s own game because it is, and rightly so they are using every opportunity to remind people of this fact. Football/Soccer is the world game, and apart from sporadic advertising most of the promotion is coming from the people who are already fans.
More could be done to link the potential for a child from their local junior side to the Socceroos at the World Cup. For all of the FFA’s strengths, effective advertising doesn’t seem to be one of them.