A Few Years Time

[brandon]

Recently I have spent sometime thinking about local football, it began with Furness Rovers paying players in the west Lancs league, shocking! Anyway, with this happening Barrow and Holker arguably being the two biggest clubs in the area right out to Kendal, in terms of playing standard, then it would surly be any aspiring youngsters ambition to play for either of these clubs, testing themselves at the highest level possible, correct? However, with smaller teams willing to pay a small sum of money to any half decent player in the area, thus paying for their Saturday night on the town, the standard of play in the town is only going to get worse. This is evident at Holker with players leaving because "im getting £25 at Furness Rovers, or im getting £60 at ambleside & i dont have to travel as far." Now this leaves Holker threadbare and bottom of the league with 0 points.

Now with Barrow in a financial meltdown and dwindling gates, relegation could quite possibly be on the cards.

How would you like to see barrow in 4/5/6 seasons time, if nothing improves and they go down 1/2 leagues. Would you like to see them pulling in players from Manchester Liverpool etc? Be based away from the town they play? Or would you like to see a complete revamp at the club, start again as it were, bring in the best of the local lads, make Barrow feel like a home team, like the Celtic team that won the European cup with all players Born within 30 miles of Glasgow. Do you think the proposition of having 16 local lads playing with their heart on their sleeves for their home town each week would bring in bigger gates, even at a lower level? Allowing the club to rebuild with a great feeling of local pride and support? Would this be a platform to starting a youth set up and propel the club to bigger and better things in 10/15/20 years?

Appolgies if my post is not very well put together, or if you find it negative, but i would love to hear your opinions on this and local football?

[burnzio]

Who's getting paid at Furness Rovers?

[brandon]

heard a few name be mentioned.

[32mile_cul-de-sac]

heard a few name be mentioned.

You heard, says it all really.

[brandon]

ok, i know of a few players who are for sure.

[burnzio]

Which players?

[brandon]

does it matter?

[spirit of 1990]

Now with Barrow in a financial meltdown

Hardly! Not great but finacial meltdown

Would you like to see them pulling in players from Manchester Liverpool etc?

How would we be able to do that two leagues below where we are now?

[bigmac95]

The idea is a good ideology but nothing more. firstly, local football isn't good enough to support barrow or create a barrow team. but lets say it was and we could find 16 players capable of playing at NPL standard, there would be nothing else coming through so eventual we would have to revert to players from manc and Liverpool. The only way barrow can cultivate locals is to set up an academy - something which would be unlikely considering we cant do that now in the conference - and feed these players into the team. Such a set up could allow for players to be loaned out to HOB with the aim to be a knock on effect to improve local football and In doing so set off a cycle of improvement. as for gates I do believe a few locals would bring in more people, people could begin to connect with the club but this can't be just done, the players must be good enough

[Wintergreen]

Bit of an overlap here - for local youth development and links with AFC, check out Neil Doherty’s post on the ‘On Loan or Local’ thread http://www.barrowafc.net/viewtopic.php? ... 7&start=15.

Another factor on the 'A Few Years Time' notion is the current trend for 18-year-olds to head off to University and in many cases, not return to the area. A few weeks ago Barrow was highlighted as having the greatest annual population migration in the UK at something like 4% most of whom would be youngsters I would imagine.

[HenneysKnee]

Obviously we'd prefer a squad of local lads but it will never happen; you need a proper academy structure in place to bring through 2/3 players nevermind 16

[onceabluebird]

I think people where leaving Holker due to other reasons, not money!

Reasons like players more interested in drinking rather than playing football, and having the chance to move up a league and turning it down???? Where's the sense in that?

Players play to win things and go as far as possible, so it's not a way of attracting players, because what's the point in playing for a team that don't want to achieve things? That's the message Holker sent out when they decided not to go up!

[onceabluebird]

And to add to my last comment! I no alot of barrow footballers and they wouldn't be interested in playing for barrow even if offered the chance because so many players have been messed around by them in the past!

A few barrow lads have been on the books and this is how it used to go- local lad playing for barrow reserves n involved with 1st team! 1st team player gets injured! Then rather than give the local lad a chance and have a good few games the club just loans players in!

Now to me, it's a joke! As a young footballer all you want to do is play! So for a player to be loaned in must make the local players feel like 'what the hells the point in being at the club' and even if they play well they just get over looked!

Barrow afc will never have local players because of the idiots who run the club!

[onceabluebird]

I definately agree with you though in aspects of- the more locals that play the more of a crowd there would be!

You only have to look at the rugby to see that that's the case!

[Cokey]

Yeah, let's get a team full of locals in the team.

I'm sure when we're bottom of the league getting battered every week, we'll be pulling in big crowds!