'Development Leagues'? You're having a laugh...

IT IS enough to make the men who spent hours coming forward with the whole strategy cry.

But, as they are grown men, they are past the tearful stage and will leave that to the poor boys who used to love their football and should be excused if they go off it and take up something else.

I'm thinking of one particular set of boys: the Bels under-14s.

The poor lot get tanked 24-0 by Rovers one week and the next weekend come back for more humiliation, this time 12-0 by Rovers.

But Bels are not the only ones suffering.

Take Rangers.

It only seems a few days ago that their enthusiastic youth coach Nick Leigh-Morgan boasted that they would be playing like Barcelona this season. But as we say goodbye to October, his club lie bottom of three so-called development leagues and are only saved from that stretching to a fourth by the hapless Belgraves under-14s.

All the while, Rangers struggle to maintain an under-21 side and it is a fair bet that before long – after all, they have already defaulted on one game – they quit on that league, leaving three sides to fight out the under-21 title. A three-team league, just how pointless would that be?

What a farce.

Today's column is not intended to belittle Bels and Rangers, merely to highlight the foolishness and self-interest of those GFA clubs who finally got to rip up the GFA's brave and clever development plan and left us with a pile of rubbish which will do nothing for the proper development of the best players and only drive more boys out of the sport.

Let's recap...

At the heart of the GFA's controversial four-year plan was the introduction of the under-21 league to counter the loss of players who reach 18 and quit the sport or drift into social league football.

By so doing the GFA wanted to challenge young players to play at higher levels while increasing opportunities for others.

In a nutshell, that's what the development plan was about – challenging the individual, more opportunity.

For two seasons it worked despite the bleating that many boys would not be physically strong enough to step up to a level where they were playing against fully-fledged men.

For those two seasons the under-21s was a strong league, sitting below Division One and providing the ideal bridge between under-18 football and the elite.

Sadly, the odd club sought to overdo the use of over-age players, but the league was a tougher grounding for Division One football than the traditional under-18s.

Division Two became the new Railway League.

This summer, and taking advantage of a ridiculous situation where the clubs have more voting powers than the men supposed to be running the sport, came the not-so-bright revisionism to overturn fundamental elements of the 'plan' and left us with the sad situation we see now where teams and individuals gorge on the less able, and at the same time imagine they are great players, while in the other dressing room another set of lads consider that BMX riding or hanging around the park might be a better use of their weekend time.

It is an outdated system based on the notion that to achieve is simply to win.

Strange that, because you look at the very best – and it does not displease me to key in the letters C-H-E-L-S-E-A when referring to the elite – and that club's development policies are similar to those which have been kicked over the stands and into the road by our clubs.

In a moment of idleness this week I came across on the web this blue-tinted review of the Chelsea youth policy which is now bearing fruit and a handful of first-team squad members.

This is what was written about the 2009-10 FA Youth Cup winners:

'The youth team, by contrast, to the first team, have fared less well at the beginning of this season, although that has a lot to do, with the very young average age of the group.

'The vast majority of last season's youth team crop have progressed to the reserve side, some even to the first team squad, and this should only be deemed a good thing. However, it has left the current youth team under Dermot Drummy as one that seriously lacks experience.

'The youth team by nature, across the league, can feature any academy players aged 18 or under, so it should come as little surprise that our lads have struggled at the start of this new season against players three years older than them. However, the club feels the experience of playing competitive matches at a younger age, against older opposition, is only beneficial in young players' development.

As a result, the youth side have won only one of their eight games this term, drawing three and losing the other four. But, as we've said, results and league standings cannot be judged as the be-all and end-all at this level of the game.'

So there you have it.

Chelsea will sacrifice trophies or challenging for them to maximise the talent of the individual and I guess other top Premiership clubs adopt similar policies.

There is no reason whatsoever why Guernsey clubs cannot approach development in the same way. But to do that they must toss aside the blinkers.

Many weeks back Mark Le Tissier, the GFA chairman the clubs do not know how lucky they are to have working so tirelessly behind the scenes, said the time was right for the clubs to get on with running their own leagues.

Well, might I ask: 'Mark, what are you waiting for?' Let them go and concentrate on the areas where you can make progress without being hamstrung by people who are riddled with blind selfishness and are slowly strangling the game.

Meanwhile, I challenge for North to put their table-topping under-14 side into the under-16s, their under-16s into the under-18s and their best under-18s into either the under-21s or Division One/Two sides.

They probably won't win any trophies but those boys will be better players for it and so will North in the longer run.

Vale Rec, the other youth powerhouse, could do the same with two of their older youth sides.

One might even go further and say that at these clubs the best players shouldn't even play in the lower age group which will challenge other players in their club, give them a game and keep them in football.

That would lead to many more players being challenged and utilised.

Of course this will only apply if the clubs have sufficient numbers of players to do this.

At the moment some don't but if they adopted this approach they would soon have the numbers as boys can see an opportunity to play where, at the moment, they do not.

It's simple enough – but the clubs must break away from the notion that pot-collecting at youth level is paramount.

Footnote:

On Thursday evening an almost apologetic Hilary Sarre, the Bels president, phoned our sports hotline with the scorers in his club's 17-0 under-18 league win over Rangers.