ALAN Burrows, Motherwell's chief operating officer, praised the SFA last night for listening to some of his club's concerns about Project Brave, but insisted further reassurance was required from the governing body to ensure them that all the elite academies admitted to their new development scheme are able to access the same fixtures programme.
The Lanarkshire side, one of a number of West of Scotland clubs meeting with SFA chief executive Stewart Regan and performance director Malky Mackay at Hampden yesterday, have been arch critics of the scheme, which envisages the population of the nation's 29 youth academies being cut by around half. Intrigue surrounds the final number of academies fulfilling the requisite criteria of full-time staff, facilities and generating enough Measurable Performance Outcomes (MPOs) to be granted 'performance academy' status, even though the Project Brave strategy group recommended that Scotland was able to sustain no more than 16 academies and the most efficient way was to play in two tiers of eight to enshrine the principle of 'best v best'.
While the criteria for measuring these MPOs has recently been corrected, to lessen the weight placed on international caps ahead of first-team appearances, Motherwell - currently SFA Youth Cup holders and currently sitting second in the Development League - feel it would make a mockery of things if their young players were not deemed worthy to take on the academies of Rangers, Celtic, Hearts and Aberdeen. After abortive progress from the SFA in implementing their performance strategy over the past six years, the success or failure of the scheme may be tied closely to the fortunes of Regan himself.
"My initial thoughts are that I have left the room far more positive about Project Brave than I have been," said Burrows. "I think the SFA have listened. There are still one or two things that we want to sort out but a lot of our major concerns have been addressed.
"I still want some reassurance, though, that if Motherwell are in the elite programme that we will still get a chance to play against Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Aberdeen and all those clubs," he added. "Because that is the clubs our players want to be playing against. That is the model I want to sell to our parents. Stewart can't answer that because he says he doesn't know which teams will bid.
"I want to praise Les Gray at Hamilton, who has been extremely positive for speaking up for the Motherwells, Hamiltons, and Thistles, clubs who don't have the wallet, but have the desire and philosophy of producing young players. It shouldn't be best v best because you can put them on a spreadsheet. It has to actually be about going out on a Saturday and Sunday and playing games. I don't want us to be locked out because we have not got a fancy dan facility or a roofed astroturf pitch. This has to be right for everybody's sake, for Scottish football's sake, we have to be better at what we are doing."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here