Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 27 June 2013

27 June 2013

"When all is said and done, they have the ability to get Jack." That was Grimsby Town's then chairman Deadly John (Topcon) in October 2009, justifying the club's sale of 15-year-old Jack Barlow to nouveau-riche neighbours King$ton Communication$ FC. Our favourite fridge magnate was summing up the position with uncharacteristic succinctness. KCFC wanted Barlow, and Town had no say in it. Richer clubs could do what they liked; poorer clubs could go to hell.

Since then, this imbalance of power has become steeper still. In 2011 the Premier League blackmailed the Football League into accepting a new set of rules. This was given the grand-sounding title of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). But all it meant was that wealthy clubs could go on hoovering up any half-decent young players they fancy from less wealthy clubs, except that the already derisory 'compensation' fees they were paying would be stripped back to a pittance.

Your original/regular Diary is recalling all this because the Mariners appear to have undergone another Jack Barlow moment. Sixteen-year-old Lewis Collins, says the Grimsby Telegraph, is to join second division Reading. The clubs are apparently "in negotiations over the final fee", Reading presumably having offered 14p and a packet of Polos, with Town holding out for Smarties and an appearance-related supplement of a plastic whistle from a Christmas cracker.

(Without wishing to rehash the recent debate over the Telewag's coverage of GTFC, it is interesting to note the paper's remark that before choosing Reading, Collins "was courted by a number of top-flight clubs including Liverpool, Tottenham and Southampton". Interesting, and surprising that our local paper did not report this at the time, given its coverage of Big Club Interest in Collins' youth team predecessors such as Matthew Bird, Joe Lightowler and Mark Gray. Perhaps this information was concealed by the club until now. It seems unlikely that any local journo would deem it unnewsworthy. But the piece makes no mention of when this detail came to light.)

So will Grimbarians soon be drooling over Collins' virtuoso performances on Match of the Day, dreaming of what might have been, and cursing the system that means Reading will have to pay Town just a fraction of his realistic value? Maybe. There's no doubt that the EPPP is a vile piece of work, and that when the amoral scum who run the Premier League concocted it, they barely even bothered to conceal their own repugnant self-interest.

Let us check, though, on Jack's progress. Four years on from his move to the north bank of the Humber, the Diary's half-arsed five-minute research has thrown up no evidence of him reaching the first team. Indeed, Barlow still seems to be playing for KCFC's youth side rather than the reserves.

There's still plenty of time: he'll still be in his teens for the time being. But gauging the first-team potential of players at Collins' age is a notoriously difficult task. In July 2008 the then Crystal Palace chairman Simon 'Tango Chops' Jordan exploded in one of his periodic rages after a transfer tribunal set a fee of just £700,000 for the promising Palace youngling John Bostock, poached by Tottenham. Bostock had made his first-team debut the previous year at the age of 15.

The tribunal, said Jordan, gave "a message that academies and youth development policies are not worth investing in because perceived bigger clubs can come along at any time and do what the hell they like. It really is making me consider my position in football, because the one thing that kept me focused in my time at Palace is producing my own players – but what's the point?"

Two weeks ago, without a single first-team start at Tottenham, and after four loan spells in the lower divisions, Bostock was released on a free transfer.

So who knows? We know that the system is rigged against us, and in favour of the big clubs. But we know that misjudgements and incompetent decisions happen every day, at big clubs as well as small. Good luck, Lewis. But I won't be watching Match of the Day when Reading are promoted again. I'll be watching Town and looking out for the next Ryan Bennett.