Do all of the SOS teams have youth teams?

Annan have u17's, 2~u15's, 2~u13's and 250 primary school kids in the soccer school.

No.

Saints have an U9's/10's, U11's, U13's, U15's and an U17's.

Threave have a similar set up in all and obviously Heston Rovers have the same set up.

Where do Heston play ? .I passed by Norfolk Park(Dumfries F.C.) the other day on my way home,and the park is like a field.It is in a shocking state.The grass hasnt been touched since god knows when.The place is in an awfull state.

Playing against Heston in the past you years don't think I ever played at the same pitch twice they seemed to move about a fair bit.

Wigtown has had an under 17s for the past few seasons which has done them well with alot of the players over the last two seasons previously playing with the 17s. Don't think there is one runing this year. Supposed to be a 19s team to play in the Scottish Cup though.

Correct Wigtown will have no 17s this year instead they are having a reserve side made up of the majority of last seasons 17s , a few players who made some appearances last year in the south and(maybe)( are waiting on their confirmation ) 3 or 4 currently playing in the Stewartry league.Oldest player i believe is 24 so still a young side.Everything is in place ie manager,funding etc and intention is to play in the Stanraer winter league after attending a meeting at the end of this month.

Judging by the state of the park at Glencaple,I would not think it is going to be used.
Where will the games be played ? .
Have Heston got a succesfull U17 team from which to get players ? .Will they want to go to such a poor team ? .
I only seen Dumfries twice last season, and they were absolute rank.Any players of decent standard would improve them.

as far as i know the south games will be played at glencaple and most parks get left uncut for spells in summer to try and get a better surface.its nowhere near as bad as places like newton,creetown,crichton and fleet for facilties and also they have to do it without the £10000 other clubs get.heston have one of the best youth set ups in dumfries and galloway.every teams entitled to a poor season can remember every team in the league going through what dumfries went through last year even the likes of threave n saints.think you'll find they'll improve in next couple of years with heston behind them!

Saints u17's will win the league this season

Where do they play ?.

Heston youth play at maryfield, but the southern counties team will continue to play at Norfolk Park and will train at maryfield.

Link

newton stewart have no youths and have no intention to have any.they threw GALLOWAY THISTLE UNDER17S off the blairmount park whilst training.they seem to forget they DO NOT own the park.it was GIVEN TO THE PEOPLE OF NEWTON STEWART.but as everyone knows GALLOWAY THISTLE will be here long after NEWTON. (STRANRAER)STEWART

Heston Rovers Youth teams train at Maryfield in Dumfries Played most of there home games at Maryfield last season
The grass at Norfork Park is cut every week and has been all this season , the training pitch at the side of the pitch is uncut.

i take it blazer boy in the chair is still in charge there the same one who is the south rep at the sfa if so he thinks he owns everything connected with newton stewart fc would it be asking too much to play locals or are the locals totally pissed off with the stranraer players every season

Spot on m8

Was that not U-15's?
No need for that at all. Could be their players for the future.
Am I right in saying 17's need players as well though??

better watch out guys , you will have the hyslop sisters after your blood with comments like this

Been over this before but will try again for the benefit of those that don't know the full story. Main points being:-

1/ As managers we ain't happy that the team doesn't have any local players either.
2/ Long before we took over most of the best Newton based players were playing elsewhere - hence why the team was constantly propping up the table.
3/ We tried our best at the time to keep Newton boys like Sanny Davidson, Tammy McCulloch and Alan Johnston etc at the club. At the time we didn't want to lose any of these lads but all of them unfortunately elected to go elsewhere. All of these guys would confirm the fact that we wanted them to stay.
4/ Approaches have been made to a number of players in the Newton area but none have decided to come along. It wouldn't be appropriate to name the players concerned but it wouldn't be too hard to find out.
5/ The door will never be closed to players from Newton as long as we remain managers.
6/ We even placed an article in the Gazette urging local players to come along - NOBODY DID.
7/ We also went to the Douglas Ewart and asked a number of boys up to the training - AGAIN NOBODY DID.
8/ We wanted to raise the profile of the club and put an end to Newton Stewart being the worst team in the league. So we had to tap into the market that we knew best and one where there were decent players who were happy to play for the club. That meant an influx of players from Stranraer - if we hadn't done that the team would either be out of business or still rooted at the very bottom of the league for seasons on end.

A lot of the issues which turned Newton based players away from the club arose long before our time. We would be happy to talk with anyone face to face who had some constructive suggestions about how we can buck this trend. It honestly bothers us just as much as anyone that we can't attract the local players to the club that we would like to. It is a weird and unhealthy situation when most of the people from the town who wonder up to Blairmount end up wanting the opposition to win.

As for the comments about the U17s being chased off the park - well I can honestly say I don't know anything about that. I will try and find out though. We would like to think that some of these boys will be Newton players of the future and every encouragement should be given to them. Is there maybe not a chance they were maybe just asked to train on the top pitch to save the park for match days? - because that happens even before games when its pretty damp. I do fear that any boys showing promise will be convinced into going to other teams in the area instead of playing for us. But I hope am wrong and some of the promising players and coaches in the Newton area actually realise that we genuinely do want to make progress on this issue. If people actually came and spoke with us they would maybe see things from a slightly different perspective.

I hope at least 1 person can see the logic of what we are saying here and step back and think about it all for a minute. Its easy to just blame us for the lack of Newton players but its a lot more complex than that. If players of the required standard (who other South teams of a similar or higher standard would also consider playing) want to play for us then give us their names! We will follow it up!

Your a good lad, I like the cut of you jib. Some of these nuggets need to take a look at thereselves for slagging you. You and your brother am I right in saying? Seem to have lot of sense and the needs of your club at heart!

ill back that up aswell thats a fair statement.. trying to get a team together these days seems to be coming impossible.. the decline from ten years ago to this present day is shocking.. a fear the worst for what it will be like in ten years time..even 5. its not just at newton theres problems. its every level.. even annan east last year struggled for players and dalbeattie this year.. so its not just the bottom clubs. with stran ath out the league now and the reserves in a bit of trouble aswell it dont look good lads..

Agree it can be difficult to gather a team together but obviously Wigtown are doing ok on this as they had 20 turn up to training on thursday for the reserve team not counting 3 who have injuries and a couple of absentees.The u19 team for the scottish cup will come from the reserves completed with 3 who are in the south team.

Fair enough m8, It was a cheap shot, It is the first i have heard of points 6 and 7.

Best of luck for the rest o the season

i think you will find if you read what i posted it was making a point about your sfa rep and regarding local based players you are correct this was happening along time before you arrived in fact you could go as far back as 25 years when they used to play prisoners from penningham mind you there was an ex rangers player who did attract a few more fans

players getting paid too much at this level is possibly the problems for all clubs scrap payment then we will see where they play i know because i used to get paid when threave were in the east

too much?? how much is too much... crichton get nothing.. threave dont recieve much.. stran reserves dont recieve much.. only saints get win bonuses and they are struggling still.. so that aint the reason why teams cant get players...

imo its down to the grass roots of football over the last decade.. nothing is being done to develop players.. this is recognisable when you look at players in our area that have gone on to succeed a living out of the game, there is a few however not enough for the size of our region..

not enough people who are willing to give up there time to go and coach youngsters and bring them up through the youth levels into senior footy.. lochar and heston /greystone are the only teams that spring to mind, once upon a time maxwelltown thistle would have 150 to 200 boys turning up to training ranging from the ages of 6 to 16.. now theyre extinct im lead to believe

if you consider the likes of east stirling pay around £15 per week non league clubs could be lower than this but you are certainly correct that there are not enough people willing to give up there time to coach kids although i'm told threave now have 4 youth teams with around 12 coaches

I think it's fair to say that it would be either Annan or Heston Rovers who have the best youth set-ups in the SOSL. However teams such as Threave Rovers are now establishing themselves as a youth and senior team aswell.

Not any more

Not enough lads for an U17's team this season unfortunately, but there will be next season.

Facts behind this piece of "stirring".Blairmount was rolled and lined by NSFC for game on wed night.Rained on wed and pitch cut up.Next home game on Sat.Rained all day Thurs.NSFC groundsman(blazer!) arrived 6-30 to repair wed's damage and found 24+lads playing on sodden pitch and asked them to go and play on adjacent pitch.Even offered to put lines on for them.Was told to eff off we can play here if we want(in front of boys.Got them off the pitch and got more abuse.3 fence posts were pulled out in view off coach before they finally dispersed with making any effort to train elsewhere.Pitch was repaired and lined for Sat.Anyone knows pitches have to be used sensibly or they soon deteriorate(Re minnigaff) These are the facts.Judge for yourselves

is there any reason why they dont play under the Newton Stewart name then? because by the sounds of things it sounds like a totally different set up

It is a totally different set up ,Galloway Thistle was founded in 1994 for any boy(now includes girls of course) who attended school in the Machers area of Wigtownshire and the 5 founders didn,t want to be tied to one particular south team in the area ie Creetown,Newton,Tarff or Wigtown.Previously meetings and training sessions were moved around the area but are now restricted to Newton.Although I joined the club in its first year I left two seasons ago and up until then were still a seperate club but don,t know what is in pipeline now.
As for the pitch saga it is recognised that Blairmount is a public park but also the home of N.S.F.C and anyone who wanted to use it asked N.S.F.C permission and yes the club chairman can be a bit over protective to the pitch but to be fair when i had the u17s if the park was playable we were given use of it and the dressing rooms.Finally the boys recently being put off park,of course they would rather train on the main pitch but considering the drains are knackered and the amount of rainfall especially in the last 2 years the only logical thing was to ask them to move onto the top pitch.

Good post - common sense prevails.

were you there NO i dont think you were i was it was not raining the pitch was not cutting up and nobody was told to eff off it was a final training session before the start of the season that was ending in a full scale game to late to line a park then dont you think all we ask is a little help from our senior side in these circumstances the school pitch is flooded minnigaff goals are down so were else can we go.
ps. we could cancel all u15. home games is that what you want .

newton stewart have a squad with NO local boys yet as was put in your quote there were 24+ young men trying to better their football skills on OUR local pitch and it was NOT RAINING and the pitch was NOT CUTTING UP.why then did you not watch and see how many LOCAL players you could of signed for NEWTON STEWART F.C not {STRANRAER}.you had a crowd of SIXTY FIVE people at your scottish cup tie but on the following day GALLOWAY THISTLE UNDER11S hosted lochryan and there were at least 80 watching the boys win in a great advert for GALLOWAY THISTLE and the way the boys are being shown by all the coaches from 11s 13s 15s and 17s on how to play passing football.the folks of newton stewart should be proud of all the thistle boys and girls.if they cannot watch local talent at n.s.f.c then they can always follow the thistle.

There are people who talk and people who do!

Galloway Thistle is not solely a Newton orginisation its for the Machars is it not ?

quite right slim was at thisle lochryan game as my grandson was playing for lochryan lots of good young players on veiw trying to play the game the right way well done to all concerned from both teams

Not being from down that way i dont know what the politics are but reading the threads on here it looks to me that the guys running the club have tried to involve people from Newton without success i wouldn't like to see this club go out of business just because people dont like the thought of Stranraer players are playing for the club so why not support them and get a few players from newton to go and see if they can get a game i was at the second half of your game on sat and enjoyed it. I bet Stranraer Athletic wish they had these guys then it would be Newton without a team so go support them and you never know you could become a winning team

Originally that was the case but Newton Stewart F.C. were the only Machars Club who took or still take an interest in what Galloway THistle are doing....Wigtown have their own youth set up with an ex Thistle Coach/Corrdinator in charge. The NSFC secretary was also Chairman of Thistle for 4 years or so and it is constituted that Galloway Thistle and NSFC have an affillation thus the Galloway Football Fair which is an outstanding success and getting better. Also Thistle age groups play in black/white stripes same as Newton and more recently when Thistle not going to have under 17s NSFC stepped in and sorted it out as it is important to ALL people involved with NSFC that any local lads who are good enough for the South play for NSFC. It is hoped that Newtons involvement with UNder 17s (Vice Chair also Physio for them) will bridge the gap in the near future and this team is run jointly by both Clubs and it is hoped that next year that the name of the team will indicate this as it was too late this year to do anything about it. Hope this clears up where/what/who Galloway Thistle (a very good youth set up by the way)are and stand in connection with NSFC.

Quite right , all Galloway thistle teams have players from all over the machars.

And Stranraer

correct, the u17s have 1 player the u15s have 4 plus 1 from glenluce since lochryan and east end finished boys from the stranraer area have limited options to play regular football.
stranraer f.c.can only accomadate so many players ,its a pity no one can start a youth set up there as there will be a lot of decent players not getting a game.