Academies are a cheap option of getting young players into clubs. People go on about the quality of player the club has produced hasn’t been great over the years, but there has been a large amount of youngsters who played for the first team from the academy when we needed them due to our injury list. With salary caps dictating squads what better/cost effective way of getting players in the club was there for us. Plenty of clubs have had players come through their academies play a few games and then are released before getting a decent contract that would cost money, but realistically we wouldn’t have lasted half as long in super league without our academy as we signed plenty of injury prone players in our last stint in SL.
Whilst it does sadden me to see the loss of our academy due to the finances I cant help wondering without ours who is going to fill in the gaps in our squad.
Players at Scholarship (U16) can still and do play for their amateur sides. Some may choose not to or give priority to scholarship but their is nothing preventing scholarship players continuing to play for their amateur sides. At Academy Level (U18 -in year 2021 U19) players are paid and cannot play for their amateur sides.
As has been said, now is the time to strengthen ties between Widnes Vikings and the community game in the town.
just because the academy has gone doesn’t mean that there can’t/won’t be a way through for the best young players.
Needs a collective effort and some new ideas.
Like the idea of the amateur game as a stadium preliminary fixture, with a bucket collection towards the amateur league.
Back in the mists of time I liked the schools u-11 7-a-side matches at half time.
In fact I remember one game when we were playing Whitehaven and the crowd were shouting to leave the kids on when the teams came out for the second half 🙂