| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... 21:54 - Sep 7 with 17152 views | Wilkinswatercarrier |
Been a lot of discussion on here about lack of quality coming through the academy. This paragraph from Dom Balls book may explain why.
'My next trial was at QPR, who ran a centre of excellence rather than an academy. I wasn't to excited about playing at anything less than an academy, but they were close by and might offer an easier pathway to the first team. I went to an evening session with my age group and trained on an Astroturf pitch which was only half lit. I had been spoilt with the excellent facilities we had at Harefield (Watford) so this felt like a comedown. The coaches arranged a five-a-side tournament and after my experience at Leicester, I played with confidence and again I was offered a contract on the spot. I was buzzing on the way home but couldn't see myself going back due to the quality of the facilities."
He was 15 years old, no wonder we haven't produced our own. Hopefully the new training centre will help. |  | | |  |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 16:38 - Sep 11 with 2352 views | OakR |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:30 - Sep 11 by Northernr |
Yeh that's true, been true a long time. Even when I was at secondary school we had Nathan Jarman who got signed by Scunny and had a half decent lower league career, and David Mirfin who signed for Huddersfield and likewise - and they had to sit everything out. weren't even allowed to play football at break time. Nonsense really. |
I thought they could stop you playing for Sat / Sun teams but not school teams, though in practice with 3/4 trainings a week I guess it' hard to fit some matches in.
What I didn't realise is that Academy kids can get to leave early to make their training, I guess that covers all 'Elite' sport. Bet the teachers are not overly impressed! | |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:04 - Sep 11 with 2314 views | Northernr |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 16:38 - Sep 11 by OakR |
I thought they could stop you playing for Sat / Sun teams but not school teams, though in practice with 3/4 trainings a week I guess it' hard to fit some matches in.
What I didn't realise is that Academy kids can get to leave early to make their training, I guess that covers all 'Elite' sport. Bet the teachers are not overly impressed! |
It's one of many fairly unforgivable aspects of the whole thing, the amount of school missed. And every single kid who's been through it seems to have stories about trying to do homework on the back seat of a car or a bus or a tube getting to evening training sessions, being so tired they fall asleep in class etc. Every book you read by somebody who's been through that system has the same stories. Basically they pay lip service to 'education is important' but they don't care really. And they praise "sacrifices" made by parents when it goes well - what you mean by sacrifices is you blew this kid's teenage years apart and luckily for him this one has gone well and he's now a mega rich professional footballer, but literally every single other one of his team mates isn't and they're now trying to get on in life with 5 Cs at GCSE or whatever because you kept hauling them out of school to play Crewe on a Tuesday afternoon.
My brother was in Scunny's youth set up for a while and when they started coming out with all this 'he can't do PE, can't play for his Sunday side, can't play rugby or cricket' etc my mum just laughed and said 'no'. He'd scored something ridiculous like 90 goals in the local U13/14 league the season before so she just said 'if you want him you can have him but we're not going along with all this.' There was stuff in there about not being allowed to play football in the garden with me and his mates. It was ridiculous, let kids be kids. There's a whole lot of studies that actually say playing other sports, smaller balls, racket sports etc actually helps - hand eye coordination, fitness and stuff like that. And besides, he was a 13 year old, not outstanding academically (sorry mate), loved being outside, physical activities, good at every sport etc. Let him be that boy. Take it all away from him on the off chance he might make it at Scunthorpe United?
All that for a return rate of less than 1%, and at clubs like Chelsea or City where there is zero intention to ever use any of them in the first team anyway. |  | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:19 - Sep 11 with 2293 views | NorthantsHoop |
What Dom Ball states about the facilities in comparison to Watford is why the new Heston centre is so important. First impressions count especially when trying to recruit youngsters these days. Been watching the Crystal Palace Academy documentary on Channel 4, we know it is hard for these young lads to make it to the top, but their training facilities at Palace looked first class and if we can emulate this sort of set up it will help to encourage parents and their kids that they are joining a club on the up. We need to get our foot back in the door as a club ready to develop youth, we cannot compete with the London premier clubs we know that, but offering a comparable route, a better chance of 1st team football than at Chelsea for example will pay dividends, it is a project and we are only just setting out on the journey. |  | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:25 - Sep 11 with 2284 views | Northernr |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:19 - Sep 11 by NorthantsHoop |
What Dom Ball states about the facilities in comparison to Watford is why the new Heston centre is so important. First impressions count especially when trying to recruit youngsters these days. Been watching the Crystal Palace Academy documentary on Channel 4, we know it is hard for these young lads to make it to the top, but their training facilities at Palace looked first class and if we can emulate this sort of set up it will help to encourage parents and their kids that they are joining a club on the up. We need to get our foot back in the door as a club ready to develop youth, we cannot compete with the London premier clubs we know that, but offering a comparable route, a better chance of 1st team football than at Chelsea for example will pay dividends, it is a project and we are only just setting out on the journey. |
Yeh bro was playing there a couple of weeks back and said it was absolutely unreal.
Was at Heston a couple of weeks ago for meetings and seeing how it was coming on. Must say it looks like it's going to be great. Building was much bigger and further along than I'd expected from the plans, and the pitches were absolutely immaculate.
The temporary bits they're in atm though... not so much. Be interested to know what the players we signed this summer thought of that when they first saw it, and whether it put anybody off. | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:47 - Sep 11 with 2237 views | NorthantsHoop |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:25 - Sep 11 by Northernr |
Yeh bro was playing there a couple of weeks back and said it was absolutely unreal.
Was at Heston a couple of weeks ago for meetings and seeing how it was coming on. Must say it looks like it's going to be great. Building was much bigger and further along than I'd expected from the plans, and the pitches were absolutely immaculate.
The temporary bits they're in atm though... not so much. Be interested to know what the players we signed this summer thought of that when they first saw it, and whether it put anybody off. |
I would suspect that they probably saw it as a work in progress, and the short term nature of football contracts probably just part of the job. The real test will be in a couple of years when the facility is finished and it can be marketed in a more holistic way. I suppose I hate to say it but it will make our lovely Loftus Road look even more of a creaking dinosaur and that might be more of a let down for a potential player signing on. Going to Watford a couple of weeks ago and seeing how it has improved after not visiting there for over 30 years just showed me how our ground has fallen below an acceptable standard for a club of our stature. [Post edited 11 Sep 2022 17:48]
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 18:03 - Sep 11 with 2191 views | TGRRRSSS |
It is a problem with HQ - but I'd say that's less of an issue if your heading for the big time, after all we's still a high level club in that respect and Eze is an example of what can happen next.... |  | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 19:39 - Sep 11 with 2103 views | Wilkinswatercarrier |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 17:04 - Sep 11 by Northernr |
It's one of many fairly unforgivable aspects of the whole thing, the amount of school missed. And every single kid who's been through it seems to have stories about trying to do homework on the back seat of a car or a bus or a tube getting to evening training sessions, being so tired they fall asleep in class etc. Every book you read by somebody who's been through that system has the same stories. Basically they pay lip service to 'education is important' but they don't care really. And they praise "sacrifices" made by parents when it goes well - what you mean by sacrifices is you blew this kid's teenage years apart and luckily for him this one has gone well and he's now a mega rich professional footballer, but literally every single other one of his team mates isn't and they're now trying to get on in life with 5 Cs at GCSE or whatever because you kept hauling them out of school to play Crewe on a Tuesday afternoon.
My brother was in Scunny's youth set up for a while and when they started coming out with all this 'he can't do PE, can't play for his Sunday side, can't play rugby or cricket' etc my mum just laughed and said 'no'. He'd scored something ridiculous like 90 goals in the local U13/14 league the season before so she just said 'if you want him you can have him but we're not going along with all this.' There was stuff in there about not being allowed to play football in the garden with me and his mates. It was ridiculous, let kids be kids. There's a whole lot of studies that actually say playing other sports, smaller balls, racket sports etc actually helps - hand eye coordination, fitness and stuff like that. And besides, he was a 13 year old, not outstanding academically (sorry mate), loved being outside, physical activities, good at every sport etc. Let him be that boy. Take it all away from him on the off chance he might make it at Scunthorpe United?
All that for a return rate of less than 1%, and at clubs like Chelsea or City where there is zero intention to ever use any of them in the first team anyway. |
When I did my FA Youth 2 there was a emphasis on encouraging the kids to play other sports, so I think it is changing.
I do wonder how much it is down to a kids mental strength rather than pure ability though. I used to play Sunday football with a kid who's younger brother was Steven Reid. The older brother, I thought, was better, but Steven went onto play in a World Cup, and of course 1 appearance for the Rs!
But that was all he wanted from 8 years old, whereas his older brother was much more laidback.
No wonder a lot of kids rejected struggle after the dream has been ripped apart. | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 19:57 - Sep 11 with 2075 views | kensalriser |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 20:38 - Sep 9 by Hastings_Hoops |
Nigel Quashie & Richard Langley may disagree. |
I'll give you Langley, good call, but Quashie was already in the team when we went down. |  |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 21:14 - Sep 11 with 2005 views | terryb |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 16:38 - Sep 11 by OakR |
I thought they could stop you playing for Sat / Sun teams but not school teams, though in practice with 3/4 trainings a week I guess it' hard to fit some matches in.
What I didn't realise is that Academy kids can get to leave early to make their training, I guess that covers all 'Elite' sport. Bet the teachers are not overly impressed! |
I think this was the case Oak when I was young but that it has changed.
In the 80's Ipswich "players" were allowed to play for the school, disrrict, county & country. I even travelled to Loftus Road to watch an England Schoolboys trial game with the father of one of the boys - Roy Stephenson, a member of their FL Championship team. Two Chantry High School pupils played in the game, Jason Dozell being the other.
I understood that this was changed sometime after the Premier League came into being & certainly Chantry pupils on Ipswich's books could not play for the school. I think this was in the late 90's, but I'm not certain of the dates.
Of course, it is always possible that theoretically the players can play for their school, but would be dropped from the academy if they did so! [Post edited 11 Sep 2022 21:26]
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 23:48 - Sep 11 with 1929 views | LazyFan |
Our Academy facilities are a great asset once built. not only will it attract established pro's, but also parents of any wonder kids especially as we can point to Bowler, Sterling, Eze and so on.
But more than that, we establish ourselves in the community and build a reputation as a community club (assuming we shall still allow locals to use the facilitates when we don't use them all). This creates more fans and improves our identity in the area.
It's not just about turning out the next wunderkind ... although that is still awesome. Brentford isn't doing it, which is one of their few mistakes in a long time. One we can benefit from.
Next up is that new stadium, 40K seater (rail seats count), I know people say we only need 30K. But Reading built a stadia bigger than they needed and average gates went up.
If we do the same we shall move from 13K average to 25K over time. I know that's still way less than 30K, but it's when you finally make it to that obscenity the prem is when we can fill it out with 40K and really coin it in.
If you gonna build it, build it for the Prem as when you get there, even if it's only for one season you need to maximise the opportunity as much as possible so, if you yo-yo between them, one time you might get lucky and establish yourself as Palace have done. This gives the greatest chance of securing the club's future for many a year (as long you avoid spending it Candle face style).
If we don't do this and others do, then the chances of survival let alone any fantasies of success diminish greatly and with laws of probability, your club goes out of business. It already happened to us once, it can happen again. We must avoid this. |  |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 11:13 - Sep 22 with 1670 views | TacticalR |
Just finished the book, which I wanted to read before listening to Finney's interview with Ball. It's about the nuts and bolts of youth football, plus some self-analysis from Ball about his own ups and downs in football. One of the points he makes is the one that Wilkinswatercarrier mentioned earlier in this thread - failure is essential to the system, because the majority are just making up the teams for the talented players to play in (because football is not an individual skill that you can learn on your own).
It's an easy read and quite short. Note that it's only available in a paper version. |  |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 11:52 - Sep 22 with 1609 views | CamberleyR |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 10:38 - Sep 8 by PunteR |
It's crazy to think Palace were going to the wall 10 years ago while we took their manager Warnock, Hill and Derry winning the championship and back into the Premier league. Just highlights how shit our owners are. We've been in the Premier twice. Bunch of buffoons.
Moan over. |
They almost got relegated to League One as well that season we nicked Warnock off of them, only staying up on the last day, drawing with Sheffield Wednesday who went down instead of them. |  |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 12:44 - Sep 22 with 1515 views | CorbyQPR |
Academys can stop players playing for other grassroots football teams, but they cannot stop them playing for their school, District or County teams. | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 13:51 - Sep 22 with 1456 views | RBlock |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 19:39 - Sep 11 by Wilkinswatercarrier |
When I did my FA Youth 2 there was a emphasis on encouraging the kids to play other sports, so I think it is changing.
I do wonder how much it is down to a kids mental strength rather than pure ability though. I used to play Sunday football with a kid who's younger brother was Steven Reid. The older brother, I thought, was better, but Steven went onto play in a World Cup, and of course 1 appearance for the Rs!
But that was all he wanted from 8 years old, whereas his older brother was much more laidback.
No wonder a lot of kids rejected struggle after the dream has been ripped apart. |
I take development sessions on a Saturday morning and we started our session last week with the kids playing netball. So many of points around passing/moving/finding space apply to football, and it's a great way to get them to think more about that side of the game, rather than just dribbling/shooting.
You've seen the England camp do it as well, training with a small American football to work on the coordination and teamwork, rather than just kicking a standard size 5. |  | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:20 - Sep 22 with 1417 views | BrianMcCarthy |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 13:51 - Sep 22 by RBlock |
I take development sessions on a Saturday morning and we started our session last week with the kids playing netball. So many of points around passing/moving/finding space apply to football, and it's a great way to get them to think more about that side of the game, rather than just dribbling/shooting.
You've seen the England camp do it as well, training with a small American football to work on the coordination and teamwork, rather than just kicking a standard size 5. |
Agreed.
5 minutes of basketball as well teaches many of the points you mentioned with netball. |  |
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| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:47 - Sep 22 with 1360 views | NewBee |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:20 - Sep 22 by BrianMcCarthy |
Agreed.
5 minutes of basketball as well teaches many of the points you mentioned with netball. |
Wasnt it a French commentator who once asked, apropos of Carlton Palmer:
"Why have England picked a Basketball player in midfield?" | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 15:04 - Sep 22 with 1328 views | PinnerPaul |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:17 - Sep 11 by terryb |
According to the Dom Ball book & boys that I knew that were with Ipswich, academy players are not allowed to play for any other sides including their schools. Perhaps this only applies if their parents have signed a contract? Or that they could now play for their school as they had been released from Arsenal etc?
It would also come as a surprise that there were a lot of academy players that were attending a private/public fee paying school, unless the clubs are paying the school fees. I think the Harrow masters may have been exagerating! [Post edited 11 Sep 2022 14:21]
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Well as I was AR Terry, could see with my own eyes, easily and away the best "school" side I have seen. | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 15:09 - Sep 22 with 1321 views | PinnerPaul |
What do we think of that 15 year old who made his debut for Arsenal last weekend.
Was playing u18s football last season (at 14) they said.
Surely, someone like that is always going to end up
a) making it and
b) making it at a top 4/6 club?
Bit like our own Raheem, as long as they stick to the football and avoid all the usual teenage pitfalls, exceptional talents like that will always end up at the very top no matter what club(s) they go through? | | | |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 16:45 - Sep 22 with 1252 views | PunteR |
| QPR Academy in Dominic Balls book.... on 14:20 - Sep 22 by BrianMcCarthy |
Agreed.
5 minutes of basketball as well teaches many of the points you mentioned with netball. |
Basketball is getting more popular amongst the youngsters. I would hazard a guess its one of the biggest growing sports in the UK. |  |
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