Head of Youth, Paul Driver reports on the last few weeks with the Youth Team - explaining why the recent downturn in results isn't giving any cause for concern - and looks forward to the New Year.
The final two league games of 2007 saw local rivals Peterborough United and Luton Town visit Nene Park on December 15th and 22nd respectively and both games followed a similar trend with Rushden fielding younger sides due to having a number of players missing through injury and suspension and twice losing out narrowly despite having more than their fair share of possession and chances.
While the team restricted the number of attempts on goal from the opposition in open play in both matches to a minimum, slack defending at set pieces led to two goals for Peterborough and one for Luton and these were the only scores in the games.
Paul comments "After the long run of victories during which we did so well to progress through to the Third Round Proper of the FA Youth Cup, results in recent weeks have not been good. This is obviously disappointing as it's always good to get a positive result from games but, at Youth Team level, winning most certainly isn't the be all and end all. Our main task is to develop young players during the two years of their scholarship and quite often, as injuries and suspensions have allowed us in recent weeks, during their Under 16 year as well - there will be very few clubs in our league programme that field sides containing four or five schoolboy players".
He added "Our recent emphasis has been on quality on the ball and making better use of possession by trying to play from the back rather than just launching the ball forward and against Brighton, Peterborough and Luton, we did this well. Our problem has been turning this possession into efforts on goal and we've been hindered by the loss of John Wigglesworth and Sam Smith, our two main strikers, for these games and this has not helped our cause in the final third. At the other end, we have been poor at defending corners and this is something we will continue to work on both on the training ground and by using the match videos we are now producing to fully analyse our individual and collective performances"
"As I say - results are not the focus of what we do, so I have been greatly encouraged by our progress as a side against teams that tend to be much older in make up to ours. There have also been some good individual progressions too - James Freshwater is coming on well on the right hand side of midfield and Connor Hayes from the under 16s came into Centre Back in place of Sean Calcutt for the Luton game and did extremely well. Best of all, though, is probably George Cox who has been brilliant at Full Back against some good wingers - his performance against Colchester in the cup was probably the best by any player this season given the quality of the two wingers he was up against. In addition, Lewis Hallford, Aynsley McDonald and Nabil Shariff have equipped themselves well whenever they have stepped up to the Youth Team from the 16's.
Looking ahead, Paul said "I expect to be continuing to put out "young" sides in comparison to our opponents over the next few months as we look to build on our progress so far this season in technical and tactical terms. We'll also work hard on the fitness of the players as we believe that this is an important element in their development towards playing in the men's game, hopefully as a professional player"
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who has helped me with the Youth Team so far this season from the coaches who work with me to the landladies who look after the boys at digs and, finally, a mention to Alan Thomas who has often travelled to support us at away games this season.
