Why making the grade here can improve chances abroad
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Tomorrow night as Giovanni Trapattoni’s class of 2011 takes on Macedonia one of the Republic of Ireland’s former heroes will be at the forefront of many people’s thoughts. Earlier this week news emerged that Terry Conroy had been hospitalised with a suspected vascular aneurysm. One hopes that a subsequent report of an improvement in his condition is sign of the early stages on the road to full recovery.
The 64-year-old deserves to hold a special place in the hearts of football fans and is rightly still revered at Stoke City. The Dubliner netted 66 goals in his 333 appearances for the club between 1967 and 1979. One more than any other gets played out time and time again. Five minutes into the League Cup Final of 1972 Stoke’s forward Jimmy Greenhoff had his goalward shot blocked by Chelsea’s David Webb, Conroy was on hand to head the ball home and set Stoke on their way to what to date is the most significant silverware the club has ever won. Not only did he help them make history but he also found himself become the answer to an often rolled out quiz question, the identity of the first footballer to have his name registered on Wembley’s electronic scoreboard. Three years earlier under Mick Meagan, the first Irish manager allowed to select his own team, Conroy won the first of his twenty six international caps.
From an Irish perspective his most notable contribution may well have away from the playing field through his work in recent years as the FAI’s Player Welfare Officer, a joint venture launched between the Association and the Department of Foreign Affairs aimed at offering a support structure to young Irish players attempting to fulfil their dream of becoming professionals in England. The challenge is stark and the plight of young footballers in England is often ignored or eclipsed by coverage of higher profile Irish players even if the release of a sixteen-year-old from a club academy serves as a far greater threat to his career than Leon Best’s much publicised nightclub visit last weekend is every likely to have on his.
Six weeks on Saturday marks the final round of regular games in the English Championship and the lower levels of the Football League. On Sunday we will have eight weeks of the English Premier League season left to play. Title run-ins and play-off drama will dictate the news agenda but behind the scenes and away from the glare of Sky Sports News, the demands of WAGs or maintenance of a fleet of top of the range sports cars many young Irish players will be called into offices at training grounds across the UK to be told that their dreams are being dashed. For some other clubs come calling, for most the traditional end of the season Lilleshall trials fail to provide an ongoing path in professional football.
Terry Conroy put the challenge facing young Irish footballers in context when he spoke to a number of Irish media outlets last year. On average, he reported, fifty Irish sixteen-year-olds will leave their homes and families this year to move to play in England. A good crop will produce only seven professionals. That’s a lot of hopes shattered and for such young shoulders a high burden of expectation let left to fall. That disappointment often comes at the end of a season where homesickness and dealing with personal and physical development is often as great a challenge as any opponent they face on the field of play. Irish football loses out on players who undoubtedly have talent, time to further develop it and an early insight into what is require to eventually make it in the game they love. Eoin Hand too has done Trojan work in his role as the FAI's Player Support Service Manager, helping players who decide to come home to get clubs in the League and start over again but clubs too could be more proactive in aiding the process. Still, they too need the aid of some structural reform.
The international team is quite rightly at the top of the Irish football pyramid but great attention and care needs to be paid to the process and structures that feed and build towards that point. For all the castigation the FAI receives, and some of it deserved, good work has been done at underage level in recent years much of it under the watchful eye of the recently departed Technical Director Packie Bonner. It will never be perfect, nor can it be, nor is it in the countries that we look to as being the ones that Irish underage soccer and player development should be based upon. There are areas that could do with improvement particularly at the upper age level. Ian Foster spoke very passionately this week about wanting to give young players at Dundalk an opportunity to shine. With suspensions and injury robbing him of many of his first team players, last Friday’s game with Bohs should have provided that opportunity. As his programme notes admitted Foster’s options were restricted because players were lacking sharpness and fitness because the A Championship is yet to start.
In any walk of life one improves by working alongside and learning from more experienced individuals, the fact that the Under 19 Championship is to run over the winter when most Premier and First Division clubs have either released their existing First Team squads, or at the very least are on a well deserved break, robs young players of the chance to do so. We have a vastly improving domestic League, one that has proven itself capable of supplying players in their late teens or early twenties to first team football overseas. At the recent launch of The Dublin Super Cup, Celtic manager Neil Lennon surprised many with the forensic detail he could go into when talking about the talent of certain League Of Ireland clubs and players. The attraction of cross channel football will always turn heads and it’s hard to ignore but at home we have a route to keep the dream alive. Let’s move to maximise it and not lose too much of our talent too young and too many to no avail.
The 64-year-old deserves to hold a special place in the hearts of football fans and is rightly still revered at Stoke City. The Dubliner netted 66 goals in his 333 appearances for the club between 1967 and 1979. One more than any other gets played out time and time again. Five minutes into the League Cup Final of 1972 Stoke’s forward Jimmy Greenhoff had his goalward shot blocked by Chelsea’s David Webb, Conroy was on hand to head the ball home and set Stoke on their way to what to date is the most significant silverware the club has ever won. Not only did he help them make history but he also found himself become the answer to an often rolled out quiz question, the identity of the first footballer to have his name registered on Wembley’s electronic scoreboard. Three years earlier under Mick Meagan, the first Irish manager allowed to select his own team, Conroy won the first of his twenty six international caps.
From an Irish perspective his most notable contribution may well have away from the playing field through his work in recent years as the FAI’s Player Welfare Officer, a joint venture launched between the Association and the Department of Foreign Affairs aimed at offering a support structure to young Irish players attempting to fulfil their dream of becoming professionals in England. The challenge is stark and the plight of young footballers in England is often ignored or eclipsed by coverage of higher profile Irish players even if the release of a sixteen-year-old from a club academy serves as a far greater threat to his career than Leon Best’s much publicised nightclub visit last weekend is every likely to have on his.
Six weeks on Saturday marks the final round of regular games in the English Championship and the lower levels of the Football League. On Sunday we will have eight weeks of the English Premier League season left to play. Title run-ins and play-off drama will dictate the news agenda but behind the scenes and away from the glare of Sky Sports News, the demands of WAGs or maintenance of a fleet of top of the range sports cars many young Irish players will be called into offices at training grounds across the UK to be told that their dreams are being dashed. For some other clubs come calling, for most the traditional end of the season Lilleshall trials fail to provide an ongoing path in professional football.
Terry Conroy put the challenge facing young Irish footballers in context when he spoke to a number of Irish media outlets last year. On average, he reported, fifty Irish sixteen-year-olds will leave their homes and families this year to move to play in England. A good crop will produce only seven professionals. That’s a lot of hopes shattered and for such young shoulders a high burden of expectation let left to fall. That disappointment often comes at the end of a season where homesickness and dealing with personal and physical development is often as great a challenge as any opponent they face on the field of play. Irish football loses out on players who undoubtedly have talent, time to further develop it and an early insight into what is require to eventually make it in the game they love. Eoin Hand too has done Trojan work in his role as the FAI's Player Support Service Manager, helping players who decide to come home to get clubs in the League and start over again but clubs too could be more proactive in aiding the process. Still, they too need the aid of some structural reform.
The international team is quite rightly at the top of the Irish football pyramid but great attention and care needs to be paid to the process and structures that feed and build towards that point. For all the castigation the FAI receives, and some of it deserved, good work has been done at underage level in recent years much of it under the watchful eye of the recently departed Technical Director Packie Bonner. It will never be perfect, nor can it be, nor is it in the countries that we look to as being the ones that Irish underage soccer and player development should be based upon. There are areas that could do with improvement particularly at the upper age level. Ian Foster spoke very passionately this week about wanting to give young players at Dundalk an opportunity to shine. With suspensions and injury robbing him of many of his first team players, last Friday’s game with Bohs should have provided that opportunity. As his programme notes admitted Foster’s options were restricted because players were lacking sharpness and fitness because the A Championship is yet to start.
In any walk of life one improves by working alongside and learning from more experienced individuals, the fact that the Under 19 Championship is to run over the winter when most Premier and First Division clubs have either released their existing First Team squads, or at the very least are on a well deserved break, robs young players of the chance to do so. We have a vastly improving domestic League, one that has proven itself capable of supplying players in their late teens or early twenties to first team football overseas. At the recent launch of The Dublin Super Cup, Celtic manager Neil Lennon surprised many with the forensic detail he could go into when talking about the talent of certain League Of Ireland clubs and players. The attraction of cross channel football will always turn heads and it’s hard to ignore but at home we have a route to keep the dream alive. Let’s move to maximise it and not lose too much of our talent too young and too many to no avail.
