Cod Almighty | Diary

Bring it

6 June 2018

Every football club likes to suggest that it's doing a lot in the way of youth development. Well, alright – most football clubs. One or two have seen the way Premier League clubs are now allowed to come round and steal all their best players for ten bob and a box of kippers, quite understandably concluded that it's not worth the bother, and shut down their academies altogether.

But developing young talent is seen as much as a sort of moral or emotional imperative as a pragmatic one. It’s just the right thing to do. It probably keeps young lads off the streets and all that. Most importantly of all, though, it warms the cockles of fans to see one of their own making the transition from the stands onto the pitch.

There's no logical reason why we should cheer more loudly for a local lad representing the first team than, ooooh, let's say a product of the Nike Academy, for example. But there’s no logical reason why we support a football team in the first place. It’s all emotion. And as far as your original/regular Diary is concerned, there’s nothing very much wrong with that.

Back in autumn 2017, any suggestion that our then star player wanted to leave the club would have induced paroxysms of panic in the Pontoon. Town fans even developed an in-joke on social media whereby we pretended he was rubbish to deter other clubs from trying to sign him. This week, by contrast, new two- and three-year contracts respectively for Max Wright and now Harry Clifton have helped us greet the news of Dembele’s transfer request with just a little shrug. Please yourself then, son.

In its statement on the request, the club couldn’t resist a characteristically passive-aggressive jibe. There's no malice in supporters' farewell to Dembele though. We recognise that he'll probably move up the divisions and do well in a winning team. And in the end we probably see that his lack of commitment on the pitch in 2018, and off the pitch this summer, are less his own fault than a reflection of a wider cultural shift within the game.

Young players who have grown up within high-profile academy settings develop as footballers in a strange environment – airless, bloodless, professionally sterile. Highly qualified coaches spend many hours with them in one-to-one sessions, working on the development of their skills. They get pro contracts but can't get near the first team, so they start to go elsewhere for match experience.

And clubs like Town loan them, and we think, hey, this lad has come from a Premier League club, and we’re in the fourth division, he’s bound to be good. And we watch him take the field, admire his well-honed technique, feel puzzled by the weird listlessness that trails around them, and walk away bemused and quietly disappointed.

Players like Dembele are never going to get it, because they reach maturity without having made a tackle or played a competitive game. It’s too late for the icy gusts off the estuary, the whiff of vinegar and grease off a tray of fish and chips, or the fans' croaked desperation to get into their blood. It's not their fault. But at our level the immaculate skills are less than half of what you need.

Players like Wright and Clifton are different. Their development will be later, and take a different track. They already know the attitude that we need and expect. They’ll develop an inner fortitude, and the skills they need, out there on the park. They know us, because they are us.

We've moved on since the days when Kevin Drinkell and Darren Mansaram were booed off the pitch by their own fans. We’ve watched players who don’t get it, and we've learned what local players are worth. And now we'll have all the time in the world for them.