North on a tightrope of glory or waste
CLUBS often don’t know the importance of exact timing, but making key strategic decisions at the right time can set the framework for years of glory or, if the wrong call is made, frustration and major disappointment.
That is why this is a big year for Northerners, still the most successful club in the history of CI football with 32 domestic titles and 17 Uptons.
But by their lofty standards, it has been a poor year for the chocolate-and-blues.
Very little has gone right for poor Jose Alvarez, who had hoped the ball of 2019-20 would keep on rolling and it did not. And why?
Injuries mainly, but there were also bad calls in terms of player recruitment and the coach has had to survive an internal struggle and a vote in confidence. All the while, he has endured a lone existence in and around the dugout.
The fact that all North’s main recruits – largely youngsters out of St Peter’s – fell by the wayside so soon should be a lesson in the club not to put all their eggs in the basket of youthful promise.
History tells us that youngsters are unpredictable in their development and, more so, commitment.
But, as the season plays out on hard, ever-bumpier pitches, the shoots of recovery are coming through at Northfield.
We have seen it in the form of two successive battling 0-0 draws with the league’s top two, games which saw Northerners finally show some real guts and desire, as if to show all and sundry that they are not wasters.
But Northerners will be just that if they make the wrong decision at the wrong time and fail to capitalise on the exciting stream of young talent they have self-developed and which was clear for all to see in the past week.
What a prospect George McNeela is.
How good can Tom Vaudin, Keene Domaille and Ben Acey be?
There are several more aces in the young North packs coming through the ranks and guided by the right coach and senior players, something special may well happen down this way.
Yet, Northerners also need to identify some trustworthy new more-seasoned recruits to blend among the new generation who, without the right guidance, may never fulfil their individual and combined potential.
Will the quietly spoken and dignified Alvarez be part of that?
The club remain adamant that no decision on Alvarez’s future has been made and that talk of Ross Cameron returning to the top job is simply that.
Clearly, though, Northerners have to up their game in terms of support roles around the first team, which for much of this disrupted campaign has seemed well below the standards expected in successful and ambitious clubs.
And with so much on the line by making the right or wrong decision, if there was ever a time for concentration of the best minds down North way, this is it.
