[cmontheloknow]

green and white, on 10 February 2012 - 06:47, said:

That's because Drumchappel United have had a good set up and reputation for years. You need good coaches to attract top players, just like at junior level, youth players won't move without knowing there's a chance of winning something. Your best bet to pick up players is exit trials and players being released from pro youth, that's what most of the top under 19s/21s teams are full off. Although before that is a different ball game.

You start off with a decent group of children, after a couple of season you move from 7s to 11s, then before you know it your under 14s/15s and along come your local pro youth side and steal all your best players, you then need to rebuild. A couple of years later 4/5 get released and are looking for clubs, 2/4 don't get any deals from other pro youth sides but you end up with 2 players who have benefited from good coaching at pro though level and are at the age of maybe under 17s. If you can attract these players back to the club then the chances of you getting more better players following them is large and you start to grow a reputation. I've seen good players walk away from pro youth football because they want to play with friends at boys club level where there is little pressure and the fun of winning trophies also.

Over all it's hard at first but it can be very beneficial to your clubs reputation if you have good youth teams.

As I said, Pollok Juveniles were an established side. They ran throughout the 80s and 90s and found it hard to get the better players who were going to play with the big teams of the day. It was catch 22 in that people wouldn't come to our 21s as they didn't see a lot of progression to our 1st team - a lot of the success cases went elsewhere to play Junior, not Pollok - even Aitchy. So we didn't get the better players to be a standout 21s side. By the early 00s it was becoming harder to get players in, Paul McQuilken another who moved on from our 21s to win things at Knightswood. I'm basing a lot of this on what I was told by one of the then coaches.

After a 5 year break or so, they've started again and the current coaches have taken the present 1993s through from 15 or 16s I think. 5 of them got a run in the Junior side at the end of last season. But my main point was it's very difficult to run a 21s side on the basis of it needing to produce players of the calibre to play Super Premier because these players, good 22 year olds, are few and far between.

This post has been edited by cmontheloknow: 10 February 2012 - 10:35