28/09/57: Shrewsbury (H)

Agree absolutely, I feel so many comment on the performance or criticise the manager whilst omitting to acknowledge that there are two teams out there and two technical areas each trying to outwit the other.

I also agree with the earlier point made about the FACT that players are better coached now and developed at a much earlier age. I am 57, when I was young, football coaching was only briefly offered by one particular student teacher during the brief time he was at my school, "Youth" football only catered for under 17s and we always played on full sized pitches with full sized balls and often in Devon on long grass by today's standards; which meant that any ability to control the ball was virtually ignored in favour of athletic prowess and stature.

It was the kids of the inner cities who didn't have grass to play on, didn't have wide open spaces to play in and generally had little else but a football as a toy who stood out in adolescence and thus eventually earned a living as footballers with the superior control and technique they had developed.

When I was a kid you were at a hell of a disadvantage as regards a proper football environment if you came from the sticks, whereas nowadays I would suggest that the main advantage a lad like my son has over a comparable youngster in Devon would be in the highly competitive environment he has to perform in due to the sheer greater density of population and the immense influence the ethnic mix of the kids around here have in producing a seemingly inborn ability to control a ball allied to the "street culture" mentality of oneupmanship that apparently demands that all the kids around him (and him included) need to be able to show off with a football in front of their mates to gain credibility in the "Cages" (fenced in and floodlit ball courts) so that (like the child of the fifties), Anthony stays out in the winter evening performing like a circus seal under the lights whereas they would have been under a street lamp.

As soon as he comes in he's forever twisting and turning a little tennis sized ball in the wooden floored hallway under both feet, playing one twos off the walls and generally driving us mad....................he goes to coaching straight from school twice a week (Tues & Thurs) plays on alternate Friday nights with Primary School League matches now every Tuesday afternoon to fit in before going straight off to his coaching ~ and he also trains with his community team (that plays on Friday nights) on Saturdays from noon until 2pm AND gets a monthly game for the Arsenal Development squad once a month on a Saturday morning....................and for the first three months of the season he's had a London FA Cup game to play on Sunday mornings too!

Not for him ploughing through ankle length grass with a ball that comes up to his knees against kids twice his size so that he got a touch of the ball once in a blue moon. Not for him either, sitting in front of a keyboard or glued to a telly; neither parents who implore him to come in and sit safely in the house.

THAT is why in the early sixties players like Denis Law, Bobby Collins and Bobby Moore strode easily through with their long acquired total skills and why seemingly most professional footballers came from areas far removed from the rural idyll. The street kid of the fifties that saw players like Ernie Pym, Tommy Northcott, Graham Bond and others emerge from the poorest part of Torquay (Watcombe, Hele & Barton) started to disappear in the affluent sixties and thus the the club's supply line of local talent dried up. Down in more urban Plymouth things changed more slowly and they were still knocking 'em out in the sixties...................whenever we went down there to play youth football or as a young adult; it was a total culture change with some games still played on shale pitches on which you HAD to have good control and bravery to go with the inevitable fall onto a hard and unforgiving surface.

Nowadays, as OUR club is proving and other more enlightened club ownerships too are joining the modern day culture in that kids will get the same level of expert coaching at the all important infant stage and imbued with a built in control of a football that is essential if they are to demonstrate against, and compete with their peers from other parts of the country.

The players of the past probably seemed more technically gifted because their game was played at a slower pace. The players of the future will need to show that same level of technical excellence (if not better) but at the high pace and quickness thinking levels of modern day football. It's all about evolution and from my point of view; football today is certainly different but has now come through the "less entertaining period" and is emerging into a highly exciting and entertaining renaissance thanks to the exciting skills and technical expertise being encouraged out of kids at a young age.