|
On a busy, blustery morning at Leeds Road playing fields Huddersfield Town's academy director Gerry Murphy is running a group of under-16s through a training exercise, boys in one line throwing the ball across to their team-mates. "Come on, get on your toes," Murphy urges, "on your tippies", and the boys, grappling with the wind and erratic throws, cushion the ball nicely and, every time, volley it back accurately. "Good lads," Murphy encourages, "keep it going now."
Huddersfield's is one of the Football League's more successful academies, having nurtured 14 local graduates into the club's current 25-player first-team squad, currently third in League One. Along with Murphy and his assistant director, Graham Yates, the academy employs two former Huddersfield players, Graham Mitchell and John Dungworth, as coaches, an education and welfare officer, Lisa Crosland, Dave Buckby, the physiotherapist, and 41 part-time coaches, scouts and other employees. With weekday coaching sessions for boys aged eight to 16, matches against other clubs at the weekends and plenty going on in the school holidays, it is a brisk, professional place - and, like all of the Football League's academies and centres of excellence, currently a worried one, too.
Last month the government told the League that from the end of this season it will pull out of funding the youth development programme, which it has done since 1998. Last season the Professional Footballers' Association stopped paying the £1.25m it had been contributing towards the scheme, so the League is now appealing to the FA and Premier League to fill a £3.75m annual funding gap. Both bodies say they support the programme and believe the money should be found but nothing is yet decided.
By the end of this month the clubs have to decide which boys they will invite to become scholars but the clubs cannot plan because they do not know if the money will be there. Across the country highly qualified coaches, many of them former professional players, are wearing fretful expressions born of insecurity. "The academies have tremendously improved training for young players," Murphy says, sitting in his well-ordered office, reeling off the names of some boys who have come through like the club captain Jonathon Worthington and, most prominently, Jon Stead, the striker now with Sunderland whom Huddersfield sold to Blackburn for £1.25m two years ago.
"In the next phase," Murphy says, "we're looking at incorporating more sports science, bringing in dieticians, to give our boys an even more advanced education. Who'd have ever thought of that in the old days? Instead we're wondering if we'll have to make cuts and people, coaches, could be laid off."
The youth development programme has been funded with grants since it was overhauled in 1998, following Howard Wilkinson's landmark report for the Football Association, Charter for Quality. There are 22 academies and 47 clubs running the less sophisticated centres of excellence. Clubs can take on boys for twice-weekly coaching sessions and weekend matches from the age of eight, all coaches are qualified up to the Uefa A Licence and schooled in child protection procedures, and all academies have full-time education and welfare officers. The programme is not without its critics, who argue that the boys are brought in too young, that the clubs do too little for the schools and amateur clubs from which boys are taken, and that the pressure on boys and their families cannot be justified by the too few places ultimately on offer.
The League points to the success rate - 600 professional players aged under 21, products of the system, played in the League last season - and argues it is a huge improvement on the patchy, at times brutal recruitment regime which previously prevailed. Lisa Crosland at Huddersfield acknowledges that the players can be seen as commodities, which the clubs hope eventually to sell, but maintains that they are well looked after. "I can say with confidence that here we are child-centred."
There is a general recognition that the clubs would be unlikely to maintain the schemes properly without external funding. Huddersfield are a good example: the club collapsed into administration in 2003 but because the academy is funded separately, it survived and provided players for the first team. The League says that, in total, the £10m of external funding is matched by another £20m invested by the clubs, either directly or from sponsors.
For the scheme's first four years the Premier League paid £5m annually, matched equally by the government. If this seems generous it should be remembered that the £20m represented the first crumbs to drop from the Premier League's satellite-TV enriched table following the top clubs' breakaway from the League to form the Premiership in 1992. Previously the First Division clubs had shared 50% of television money with the lower three divisions.
In 2002 the youth development scheme was maintained but the Premier League reduced its contribution to £2.5m and the government to £1.5m, with a further £1m levered in from Sport England. The FA came forward to provide £2.5m, the Football Foundation put in £1.25m and the PFA was prevailed upon to pay another £1.25m, making up the full £10m. The funding amounts to £138,000 per club.
The PFA stopped its payments last year, following the downturn in TV revenues which provide the players' union with its budget. The League spent all the fund's reserves to plug the gap. The government's reasoning for pulling out now, which includes the Sport England contribution, is that it has changed its sports policy and wants to spend public money on encouraging more ordinary people to be active not an elite programme designed to produce professional footballers. "This is a good scheme but we don't do anything similar for any other sport," said a spokesman from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. "Football is very cash rich so should be able to fund this itself."
The League has protested, to no avail, so Andy Williamson, its operations director, has trudged from meeting to meeting in search of the £3.75m. The FA and Premier League have both made encouraging noises that they will jointly find the money but football is always political and nothing is concluded.
"We're very worried," Williamson said. "Without core funding, more clubs will scrap their programmes, which have provided a route for local talent to play for their home clubs. It would be a travesty if so much good work were to unravel for the want of what, in football terms, is a very small amount of money."
Encouraging signs are there: a Premier League spokesman said there is support for the scheme to be funded, at least for another 12 months until its future can be put on a firmer footing. "We need to decide how to split the £3.75m required with the FA."
The FA, too, is looking at finding the money. A source said: "We understand the need to reach a conclusion soon."
This issue does, though, make the boardrooms of the FA and Premier League, where the funding will be decided, feel a long way from playing fields like those at Leeds Road where the hopes of young boys are built and broken and where coaches are wondering how they will be paying the mortgage next season.
How the numbers stack up
There are 69 Football League youth development programmes, 22 academies and 47 centres of excellence
7,500 players are registered, from the age of eight to 16; 1,800 staff are employed, 400 full-time
For the first four years of the scheme, 1998-2002, the £10m annual funding package was met jointly by the Premier League and the government
From 2002 to 2005 48% of all England youth international appearances aged U15 to U20 were made by players registered with Football League clubs
From 2002 to 2005 52 Football League youth players moved to Premiership clubs, including Sunderland's former Huddersfield striker Jon Stead, below
The funding package:
Premier League £2.5m, FA £2.5m, PFA £1.25m (discontinued last season), Football Foundation £1.25m, Sport England £1m, government £1.5m
Each club receives a maximum grant of £138,000 of funding
|
Latest press releases 
