Keiffer Moore

If this is the case you can draw several conclusions:

1. Torquay United didn't respond to the recommendations and the player remained "off the radar".

2. Torquay United knew all about Keiffer Moore anyway, both as a younger player and how he was developing. For whatever reason, the club wasn't interested.

3. The player himself wasn't - at the time - motivated towards following up any offer of a trial, a contract or whatever with Torquay United.

I lob in (3) without knowledge of Keiffer Moore but as a reminder there are often "unknowns" in these equations. I suspect the old "surely he would have jumped at the chance" argument isn't always true with young footballers. It often, of course, depends on whichever stage they've reached with their education, employment or training. If Keiffer Moore has, say, added to his qualifications - and later become a Football League player - he's not done bad for himself.

But the patterns of career and personal development are altering amongst young footballers. I was recently minded to track the progress online of some of Torquay United's recent youth players. When doing this you tend to think in footballing terms: are any of them, for instance, playing at a decent level of semi-professional football? Not too many from what I could discover.

That alone would an old-fashioned way of measuring "progression". It certainly seems several of our ex-youth players are doing other things such as travelling the world, playing abroad (Saul Halpin in New Zealand for example) or attending university in this country. There's also others - including Rob Nardiello - who are on sports scholarships in North America.