The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Specs, pies and gaffer tape

12 October 2016

Today is one of those days when circumstance compels us to ponder the policy of our football club on player development. Since the summer we've seen Town's youth set-up receive both attention and investment from whoever it is, in the absence of a chairman, that actually runs the club. The return to the Football League has brought extra funding as the club targets a higher categorisation for the academy. In a remarkable statement of intent, Town have appointed an experienced academy manager from the outside world instead of giving the job to a 24-year-old former graduate of their own youth system who never made it into the first team but trained as a PE teacher while playing part-time for Armthorpe Welfare.

For all that – and for all the talk that the current crop of youthers are Town's most promising for ages – there still seems little sign of them taking the field at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon instead of 2pm on a Tuesday. There still seems little to reassure supporters that the mistakes made with Dayle Southwell won't be repeated in spades.

Your original/regular Diary is ruminating on this because the situations of two such players have come to our attention in the past 24 hours. First, Josh Venney, who stood out in yesterday's 3-1 win for the reserves against Town's feeder club York City. As well as putting Town ahead with a second-half goal, the 19-year-old midfielder created several chances for his team-mates.

Then there's Harry Clifton, who was given squad number 15 by Paul Hurst back in the summer but seemingly isn't even deemed worthy of having a player profile on the club's superb new official website. One item of Cliftonalia the SNOS does bring us today, though – and a genuinely good content idea – is a 'loan watch' interview about the player's temporary spell with Grantham Town of the Northern Premier League. It remains to be seen, of course, whether all this valuable match experience will serve any purpose once the player is back at the right end of Lincolnshire. It could be that history will repeat itself (it has a habit of that, after all) and giving these players very limited opportunities to establish a foothold in the first XI will bite us on the arse a la Southwell.

Or maybe I'm just seeing it wrong.

In other news today, one midfielder who should pretty much be guaranteed a first-team place when available finally appears to be recovering from what he calls "the most frustrating injury of my career". Sean McAllister looked proper class before groin-knack stopped his GTFC appearance tally back in August at the grand total of three. His Telewag interview is highly encouraging and I suggest you read it. In other other news today, the Derby Telegraph has a smashing piece with a probably made-up but nonetheless enjoyable anecdote from Tim Ward's time as Town manager in the 1960s, and Anything build on Pleasure Island site would not need stilts!