| Young Guns Blog by John Jones |
page updated: Fri, 20 May 22 : 07:15 : refresh for updates
To read all last season blog posts scroll through posts on the young guns page
As the season comes to an end, this will be my last young guns blog until the start of next season. Over the last nine months or so, I have presented the names of two hundred and five young men who all deserve to be congratulated for what they have already achieved in their football careers. For many, they are very much at the beginning of their journey, others are a little more established but will be hoping for quite a few more years of success before they ponder about what is next for them.
Undoubtedly, credit must go to the players themselves for having the dedication and determination to develop their natural abilities to such a high level. I’m sure they will however acknowledge a debt of thanks to the assistance they have received from the Football Association of Wales and the coaches that have guided their development at regional and national levels. Welsh football has benefitted from the original vision, construction and execution of the national coaching plan initiated a couple of decades ago, one that was, and still is, excellently developed and coordinated by all the personnel involved. Credit also, to those in the Football Association of Wales group that provide financial backing for such an important project.
Evidence of success is the afore mentioned more than two hundred names in the young guns category this season. This is an unprecedented figure, a much larger number than in the times before the inception of the national plan and one that has been growing in the intervening years. It can be noted that it is not only quantity but also quality has been an improving trend, a statistic supported by the accepted opinion that the strength in depth of the senior squad is superior to any comparisons with the past. Hopefully, the encouraging signs we are witnessing as Welsh fans can be continued, and the senior team will gain improvement on the already very competitive entity it has already become.
Of course, though club season football is almost complete, there is still an amount of the international calendar that awaits us, including the all important game the whole nation is anticipating. One game remaining to determine whether we will witness another participation of a Wales team at the World Cup Finals. I will offer this somewhat contradictory statement and say that I am nervously confident that we will be celebrating a positive result in another couple of weeks or so.
I did contemplate the possibility of adding some more verbiage to this week’s offering but decided that it was just my opinion and you have probably read it one way or another in my previous writings. Although brevity is not generally a forte of mine, I thought maybe it was apt this week.
Anyway, as I move towards the finish, I hope that I have managed to provide some enjoyable moments as you have read my contributions during the season. I apologize for the shortcomings that I am sure is a frustration for some of you at times. I do enjoy trying to construct something worthwhile each week and make the best of the information I am able to access. As it stands at present, my intention is to have a break for a couple of months or so and then return to writing more young gun blogs next season. I will say that if anyone wants to offer any suggestions, I would be very pleased to receive them. Finally, I would like to wish everyone a most pleasant summer and hope that we will have a reason or two to celebrate as the weeks move along.
I am adding a little post script to mention that another half dozen or so players could have been included in the young guns category, but they did not seem to feature in any matches during the season, as best as I could tell, and so I was at a loss as to what to write about them. There were also some first year scholars at Newport that I had insufficient information about and so they did not get a mention.
page posted Fri, 20 May 22 :07:15 : refresh for updates
[ photo embedded from FAW cymru ]