The Importance of Individual Development in Academy Football

Are you judging the success of your academy by the games on Sunday or are you really about individual development? I think culturally we really struggle with that one don't we? Oh you know we want to win on the weekend or is it the ego or the coach or that sort of thing? Yeah I think when we were in the academy there Jim Ryan used to say the only team other than the first team where it really matters is the reserve team. That's not to say we weren't trying to win every game we certainly were but it wasn't going to be at the expense of people developing their skills and even then you have to remind people so we had a really nice player a left foot