John Park, Tony Mowbray and East Mains

[McKenzie]

100% the quality of coaching. Oriam isn’t exactly prime location for accessing but they manage to attract vast array of talents. All about the programmes put in place within the buildings. At what point do the youth team managers and leaders come into question when we continually fail to either produce or attract the quality of player to challenge the first team.

[Dmas]

I think the development league structure has been the cause of not just our youth team woes but the majority of the leagues. There’s a good article on the athletic if anyone subscribes about brentford, they ditched their academy structure in favour of B team 3 years ago, before that move they hadn’t had a notable young player come through in 3 years since then they’ve saw 16 players break into the first team and they made £100m in transfer fees.
We’ve recently done similar and we’ve played against brentford on a few occasions so you never know maybe reap similar rewards in a couple years time

[PaulSmith]

I wonder now if Hibs are looking at the facilities that are in plan by Edinburgh University at Peffermill and having any dialogue?


https://www.ed.ac.uk/estates/campus-...sports-village




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[MagicSwirlingShip]

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I wonder now if Hibs are looking at the facilities that are in plan by Edinburgh University at Peffermill and having any dialogue?


https://www.ed.ac.uk/estates/campus-...sports-village




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Doubt it when we have our own space with room to develop.

[Viva_Palmeiras]

The idea that we could have a conveyer belt of talent was/is an easy to disrupt.

1) Entice away the key personnel - Park to Celtic
2) Kill the reserve league - iirc Rangers and Celtic withdrew ?
3) pay more to entice starlets away before they’ve had time to really develop.

To counter this
A) Establish and develop a network of hungry, smart key roles with development paths / succession planning
B) setup more targeted opposition friendless that will develop the players as opposed to trouncing East of Scotland league opponents which learns you nothing - Lewis Allan talked of this at Sponsors evening
C) offer to develop kids in a wider sense as human beings, care and nurture them appreciating not all of them will make it but if the mega bucks cone...

[Since452]

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Fair enough. Probably should have been closer to town in that case.

Looking at various clubs training facilities distances to their grounds.

East Mains to Easter Road - 13 miles 24 mins
Hummel training center to Ibrox - 7.2 miles 18 mins
Lennoxtown to Celtic park - 14 miles 29 mins
Aberdeen training Center to Pittodrie - 7.6 miles 20 mins

Can't include Hearts as they obviously don't have their own facility

[Northern Hibby]

I like East Mains but I think it should be coupled with a bit of old school sand dunne running. 😉

[Brooster]

[QUOTE=McKenzie;6049985]100% the quality of coaching. Oriam isn’t exactly prime location for accessing but they manage to attract vast array of talents. All about the programmes put in place within the buildings. At what point do the youth team managers and leaders come into question when we continually fail to either produce or attract the quality of player to challenge the first team.[/QUOTE

Spot on. Said it before and I'll say it again.....as long as the current folk heading up the academy are still there we wont produce anywhere near the number of youths through the ranks that we should be.

[Dmas]

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Looking at various clubs training facilities distances to their grounds.

East Mains to Easter Road - 13 miles 24 mins
Hummel training center to Ibrox - 7.2 miles 18 mins
Lennoxtown to Celtic park - 14 miles 29 mins
Aberdeen training Center to Pittodrie - 7.6 miles 20 mins

Can't include Hearts as they obviously don't have their own facility

I know a young player at Celtic who regularly tells me East Mains is by far a better facility than Lennoxtown......minus the wind

[Dmas]

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The idea that we could have a conveyer belt of talent was/is an easy to disrupt.

1) Entice away the key personnel - Park to Celtic
2) Kill the reserve league - iirc Rangers and Celtic withdrew ?
3) pay more to entice starlets away before they’ve had time to really develop.

To counter this
A) Establish and develop a network of hungry, smart key roles with development paths / succession planning
B) setup more targeted opposition friendless that will develop the players as opposed to trouncing East of Scotland league opponents which learns you nothing - Lewis Allan talked of this at Sponsors evening
C) offer to develop kids in a wider sense as human beings, care and nurture them appreciating not all of them will make it but if the mega bucks cone...

The fixture list put in place will be key as you say you learn nothing hammering east of scotland players every week,you need to get a challenging schedule set up so that it in effect takes out the ‘friendly’ atmosphere surrounding it, the guys need challenged and they need to be playing to compete but also can’t be getting hammered every week themselves, quite the balancing act

[Dmas]

[QUOTE=Brooster;6050195]

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100% the quality of coaching. Oriam isn’t exactly prime location for accessing but they manage to attract vast array of talents. All about the programmes put in place within the buildings. At what point do the youth team managers and leaders come into question when we continually fail to either produce or attract the quality of player to challenge the first team.[/QUOTE

Spot on. Said it before and I'll say it again.....as long as the current folk heading up the academy are still there we wont produce anywhere near the number of youths through the ranks that we should be.

Can I ask why you think this is the case? has Eddie May been there long enough for anything he’s done to have an effect on younger guys?

[Since452]

Think the club are doing all they can. We've got elite status so meeting the top criteria

[Brightside]

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I know a young player at Celtic who regularly tells me East Mains is by far a better facility than Lennoxtown......minus the wind

Both have almost the exact same facilities. Celtic were supposed to build a dome a few years back but it’s never happened. The Celtic Astro is better than any of the league astros.

[Brooster]

[QUOTE=Dmas;6050211]

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Can I ask why you think this is the case? has Eddie May been there long enough for anything he’s done to have an effect on younger guys?

Without going in to it too much Eddie May has an impact on all youths at the club, he also has an impact on the players we try attract to the club. Note...for impact read negative impact.

[Greenworld]

[QUOTE=Dmas;6050211]

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Can I ask why you think this is the case? has Eddie May been there long enough for anything he’s done to have an effect on younger guys?

He has been at Hibs for almost 6 years heading up the academy.
Personally I think that is long enough and would like to see a fresh face lead it. I am never enthused by Eddie but to be fair to him it is what all the coaches and kids think I've read on here before he was not overly liked .

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[Dmas]

[QUOTE=Brooster;6050217]

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Without going in to it too much Eddie May has an impact on all youths at the club, he also has an impact on the players we try attract to the club. Note...for impact read negative impact.

[QUOTE=Greenworld;6050223]

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He has been at Hibs for almost 6 years heading up the academy.
Personally I think that is long enough and would like to see a fresh face lead it. I am never enthused by Eddie but to be fair to him it is what all the coaches and kids think I've read on here before he was not overly liked .

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I see, I was of the thinking Eddie maybe enjoyed his job more that it seemed he did the caretaker role,I don’t know much about the academy set up at all really one of the things I wished hibs opened up a little more to the fans.

really need more out of East Mains youth wise really important for a club like ours hopefully we start to see something soon

[hibee-boys]

Off topic I know but whenever I see Tony Mowbray's name I can't say without breaking into "Tony Mowbray...Mark Venus" etc etc song.

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought.

[RIP]

Thanks for the responses. Some excellent points.

I made it clear that the facilities are a superb asset to the club. But given their location it is highly unlikely that Hibs will ever attract kids from Lanarkshire Ayrshire Stirling or Fife due to the huge travelling distances to Ormiston.

After McLeish and Park left Motherwell in 1998 they kept on an academy in Holytown and used that for Hibs. Mums and dads could get there from most population centres in an hour. At that point youth training was twice a week.

At East Mains training is three times a week. Few parents can support those travelling distances and public transport for the youth would take hours in each direction. My son Cammy had a trial there at age 13 but to get him there from Perth in after work rush hour 3 times per week would have been unrealistic.

There’s no doubt we’ve really missed John Park as a youth scout who had a network of contacts across youth football. He did superb work at Well with bringing through youth, then at Hibs, then Celtic.

[Since452]

East Mains isn't going to produce a conveyor belt of talent that are good enough for top level football in this country. I don't think people realise how good you have to be. Robbie Neilson said after Sundays game that his players weren't used to playing at that intensity against a top flight team and that's a team scooshing the Championship. Any academy will produce a gem or two every decade but the vast majority just won't be good enough and end up in the lower leagues or juniors. It's rare to be good enough at a young age for the Premiership. Porteous is a gem then we have Shaw, Murray and Gullane that might make it. That's decent. Don't think Hearts, Aberdeen, and the ugliies are any better than us

[Spionen]

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Maybe they didn't spend enough then, as it doesn't seem to have delivered in terms of youth development.

I'd hate to be a parent of a kid coming from North Edinburgh and trying to get there for evening training.

But many of those same parents (for reasons only known to them) are happy to battle their way for hours through traffic to Lennoxtown and Murray Park instead of East Mains or Oriam!

[The Modfather]

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Think the club are doing all they can. We've got elite status so meeting the top criteria

I’d be weary of using any criteria set by the dinosauric institute that is the SFA as too much of a yardstick in measuring the success of our youth set up.

[The Modfather]

[QUOTE=Brooster;6050195]

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100% the quality of coaching. Oriam isn’t exactly prime location for accessing but they manage to attract vast array of talents. All about the programmes put in place within the buildings. At what point do the youth team managers and leaders come into question when we continually fail to either produce or attract the quality of player to challenge the first team.[/QUOTE

Spot on. Said it before and I'll say it again.....as long as the current folk heading up the academy are still there we wont produce anywhere near the number of youths through the ranks that we should be.

I don’t know much about the set up, but I’d love us to try and get John Collins involved in it if possible.

[MagicSwirlingShip]

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Thanks for the responses. Some excellent points.

I made it clear that the facilities are a superb asset to the club. But given their location it is highly unlikely that Hibs will ever attract kids from Lanarkshire Ayrshire Stirling or Fife due to the huge travelling distances to Ormiston.

After McLeish and Park left Motherwell in 1998 they kept on an academy in Holytown and used that for Hibs. Mums and dads could get there from most population centres in an hour. At that point youth training was twice a week.

At East Mains training is three times a week. Few parents can support those travelling distances and public transport for the youth would take hours in each direction. My son Cammy had a trial there at age 13 but to get him there from Perth in after work rush hour 3 times per week would have been unrealistic.

There’s no doubt we’ve really missed John Park as a youth scout who had a network of contacts across youth football. He did superb work at Well with bringing through youth, then at Hibs, then Celtic.

Sounds like a logistical problem to me.

East Mains is a brilliant facility. Surely the cost of a few old buses to pick up kids from around the country a few nights a week would be a sensible investment.

[Brightside]

I've not seen anything at any of the youth sessions in the Oriam that would make me want to go there rather than HTC.