r/LeagueOfIreland • u/100MilesandRunniNG Bray Wanderers • 5d ago

✍️ Original Content Made a Video About Shamrock Rovers’ Academy and why it's so efficent

https://youtu.be/a4xArpIkBRA

Cheers and delete if not allowed, please.

34 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

7

u/Feariontach1798 Shamrock Rovers 5d ago

Great video.

3

u/100MilesandRunniNG Bray Wanderers 5d ago

Thanks man

1

u/TheIrishStory 4d ago

Apppreciate the effort and makes some interesting points.

I'm not sure I fully agree with the premise though. The funding as childcare only came in last year so wouldn't have made that big a difference yet. The SRFC academy has been a work in progress since about 2012 or so.

Basically it came out of Rovers' first experience in the Europa League group stages in 2011 and the decision was made to try to invest the money in a long term development rather than just on first team players. In 2014 Rovers acquired the land at Roadstone as a training facility and base for the academy, which was a major expense and also in that year played a reserve team, mainly consisting of academy players in the First Division. This didn't last of course, but it showed the intent. Stephen Bradley originally was manager of one of hte academy teams (U-19 I think) when he got the first team job in 2016.

In terms of selling young players for fairly big money, you've had Gavin Bazunu, Kevin Zefi, Naz Raj, Aydamo Emakhu etc. over the last five years. As well as good LOI players such as Brandon Kavanagh, Sean Boyd and others produced, who didn't stay at Rovers.

So basically it's a long term project. What's changed recently, I would say is (a) accretion of experience, and growing reputation, meaning that Rovers are producing more and better young palyers for the first team, such as Michael Noonan and Victor Oz. and others. And (b) Brexit. the fact that players can't go to the UK before they turn 18 now is absoltuely massive in terms of keeping them longer in the LOI.

2

u/peadar87 Bray Wanderers 1d ago

I didn't realise the academy was a direct reinvestment of Europe League funds. It's such a sharp and sad contrast with what Dundalk's owners did with the millions they earned from European football.

1

u/TheIrishStory 21h ago

Yeah well they were vultures, Peak 6. We were a 100% fan owned club at the time.

Now that said, it did need outside investment to keep it going and to get it up to its current standard.

1

u/100MilesandRunniNG Bray Wanderers 4d ago

Thanks for the feedback man. Some really good stuff in there and I’ll be taking those notes with me going forward.

I agree with all your points, subconsciously I wanted to poke holes in the poor discussions in media regarding academies and how some pundits just want it to happen without organisations following the process.

Rovers is good example of how it’s done and I took a portion of it and ran with it.

0

u/Practical-Goal-8845 Shamrock Rovers 4d ago

Is the childcare funding for the academy fully confirmed?.. at the time it sounded like there was positive mood music from govt etc but I'm not sure I ever heard it was a fully done deal?

Noonan was a masterstroke, but we can't really claim the academy developed him. In fairness to Bradley he has found a way to get more youngsters like Noonan first team game time of late and that does increase interest in them as they can be seen to be somewhat proven.

1

u/TheIrishStory 4d ago

Fair point about Noonan. Yeah, I don't really know the ins and outs of the childcare deal. The last update I can find is from last December which says 'The next, and most time-consuming part of the project was preparing an application for the Charities Regulator – a very detailed piece of work with a large volume of information required. This application is currently being reviewed and processed by the regulator, and it is hoped that it will be approved early in the new year.'

https://www.shamrockrovers.ie/2024/12/09/srfc-foundation-update/