Sunshine Coast Fire technical director Melvyn Wilkes has made some exciting announcements which could have major benefits for player development in Australia.
The comments came in an interview on Football Nation Radio with Carlos Alberto Diego that covered the upcoming NPL season, player development and the future of the club.
Wilkes only returned to the club this year after a nine-month stint exploring player pathways in the UK. He initially resigned from the post in 2017 citing “personal family issues”.
In the interview, a few statements in particular caught my attention.
“Without going into too much detail, we just signed a memorandum of understanding with an organisation in Europe that will see us working very closely with over 100 professional teams from the UK where we will be taking players from Queensland to play a lot of the Premier League clubs and actually bring the Premier League clubs on to the Sunshine Coast initially before we roll out nationally,” said Wilkes.
“There’s a little bit to do but we’re very much in the final stages of making that happen before March.”
“It’ll be an Australian first, it’s actually a worldwide first which will encompass the Premier League so we’ll see what happens, there will be exciting times ahead,” he concluded.
The statements he made were a bit vague but I guess we’ll soon find out what they’ve been up to. It’s certainly a startling show of ambition from a club currently mid-table in Queensland’s NPL state division.
Given that the low number of Australian players in top European leagues has been a real problem lately, the idea of forming some sort of comprehensive program to get players on the production line in the English football leagues could be a real boon for Australian player pathways and development.
Could this be the start of something big?
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