Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Coleman is ready for the special Ks challenge


Must do better: Rhys Coleman, here in his Cray Wanderers days, wants his Robins team-mates to cut out the silly mistakes
Carshalton Athletic defender Rhys Coleman is looking forward to the visit of promotion-chasing Kingstonian on Saturday despite the vast difference in each club’s current form.
The Robins go into the Ryman Premier League derby off the back of three defeats, the latest coming after extra time against Merstham in the Surrey Senior Cup on Tuesday, while the visitors have only lost two of their last 11 league games.
“I’m looking forward to the game and going into it with a positive outlook,” said Coleman.
“We must work on cutting out individual mistakes as they are costing us games at the moment, but there is a good bond within our dressing room and we will all be striving to get something against tough opposition.”
Coleman and his team-mates have also struggled to outscore opponents this season, with strikes by Tommy Bradford and Quincy Rowe not enough in Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat, but the versatile midfielder was encouraged by the amount of chances he and his team-mates created.
“We created a lot of openings on Tuesday and should have scored more than just two,” Coleman added.
“If we can discover our goalscoring touch, and we do have players here who can get them, then I believe we can give anyone in this league a fright.”

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Robins boss Ian Hazel is counting the cost of Tuesday’s extra time battle as Rowe, Bobby Price and Charlie McCarthy all picked up knocks, which may limit his defensive options.
On-loan Colchester United keeper Shaun Phillips has signed on for another month however.

Carshalton boss Massey owns up to the tough task ahead


Carshalton boss Massey owns up to the tough task ahead

By Jack Miller
New man: Rhys Coleman, here in action for Robins’  rivals Cray Wanderers, made his debut for Stuart Massey on Tuesday night, but he could not prevent a 4-0 home defeat to Dulwich Hamlet  SP52241
New man: Rhys Coleman, here in action for Robins’ rivals Cray Wanderers, made his debut for Stuart Massey on Tuesday night, but he could not prevent a 4-0 home defeat to Dulwich Hamlet SP52241
Carshalton Athletic boss Stuart Massey has admitted it will be tough to stay in the Ryman Premier.
He delivered the damning verdict after the Robins’ relegation woes were compounded by a 4-0 defeat at home to Dulwich Hamlet on Tuesday night.
It leaves Carshalton just one point off the foot of the table, and seven points behind Enfield Town.
Massey said: “This campaign won’t be defined by matches against Dulwich as they are the standout team in this league.
“They were a real handful. I had spoken to several other managers before the game about their quality, but they had too much for us.
“Realistically it is going to be difficult for us to stay up, the past couple of results haven’t changed that,” he conceded.
“But we’ve had a couple of much improved performances recently, and were unlucky not to come away with anything against Lowestoft with 10-men.”
Despite the team’s struggles, and a record of one win in six since he took over last month, Massey is still relishing the challenge at Colston Avenue.
“I am enjoying it, even if that’s hard to understand coming off a 4-0 home defeat,” he said.
“It’s good to be involved with the lads and we are cracking on with the task ahead.”
“Team spirit is good, although a few boys were shocked by the quality of Dulwich. Our aim is to reach that level.”
Massey has added to his squad during his month in charge, and two new signings – defenders Rhys Coleman and Jamie Riley – made their debuts against Dulwich just 24 hours after signing.
Massey said: “I’ve worked with Rhys before, and Jamie is young, but keen to knuckle down – he has a good career in front of him.”
Carshalton go to mid-table Canvey Island this Saturday needing a confidence boost.
Massey said: “Confidence is everything for us – hopefully Tuesday night won’t have dented it too much.
“I have set the target of two or three wins out of the next six or seven games, and that has not changed.”
Wimbledon Times:
Tough job: Stuart Massey is not under any illusions as to the difficulty of keeping the Robins in the Ryman Premier League

Massey: It's time for Robins to be honest


Gone: Rhys Coleman (Above, playing for Charlton Athletic) has left Colston Avenue for Croydon Athletic SP81896
Stuart Massey has called for honesty as Carshalton Athletic slip ever closer to the Ryman Premier League trapdoor.
The Robins lost 1-0 to AFC Hornchurch at Colston Avenue on Tuesday night leaving them bottom of the table, and 14 points adrift from safety with seven games to play.
Since Massey took over in January, he has presided over three wins and 12 defeats.
And further home defeats against Enfield Town this weekend and Grays on Tuesday could seal the Robins’ fate.
Massey said: “Survival is still possible, yes, but it does no good to just keep saying we can get out of trouble.
“We have to be honest about the situation and say it’s a big ask.”
He added: “We’ll aim to get seven positive results, but I’ll be more than happy if I see my lads continue to play at the same kind of intensity which earned us two wins in March.”
Massey was pleased with his side’s endeavour against Hornchurch despite being without regulars Bobby Price and Jason Goodchild.
“Everyone out there competed well against a club sitting in the play-offs and that's what I'm talking about," he added. "Unfortunately we gave away a soft goal and its ultimately proved decisive, something we need to work on."
Carshalton ended up with 10 men on Tuesday as Stefan Cox received two late bookings, for dissent and then a trip, but Massey felt perplexed by the decision.
“Stefan was silly and I don't condone his actions but neither incident is comparable to an overenthusiastic two-footed tackle Adriano Moraes received in the first-half,” he said.
“I don’t want to see any player get sent off but their guy only got booked. It all seemed a bit inconsistent to me.”
The Ryman League transfer deadline came and went on Monday with Robins adding three new faces, including striker Matt Marshall, while midfielder Rhys Coleman joined Croydon Athletic.
“Matt has pro experience and has also played Spanish league football. We’ve given him a trial and I think he'll be a good acquisition once fully fit,” Massey said.
“I didn’t want Rhys to leave but he received a great offer and it's closer to where he lives, so he went with my blessing.”

Saturday, May 10, 2014

South London and the birth of the educated footballer

This is an edited version of a piece I wrote for 4-4-2 magazine in September 2009
Whitgift School in Croydon is not the sort of place you’d expect to find the future of English football. This breeding ground for bright young talent is as far from the stereotypical back streets of football’s urban north as you can get. Situated in 45 acres of parkland and boasting colonies of albino wallabies, flamingos and red squirrels, Whitgift School is one of the oldest and wealthiest private boys schools in the country. For centuries, it has produced outstanding academics and sportsmen. The latter have usually been rugby players such as England fly-half Danny Cipriani or cricketers (the county-standard pitch is used by Surrey CC), as befits the tradition of the English independent school, which  leaves football to the hoi polloi of the comprehensive sector.
So how have four professional footballers emerged from Whitgift’s ranks in the past few years? Why does the school currently count 13 children from different footballing academies – including Chelsea and Tottenham – among its 1,200 pupils? And how did the school attract three former footballers to work on its coaching staff?
To answer those questions, I entered the headmaster’s study to meet Dr Christopher Barnett, the man who brought soccer to Whitgift. As we talk, exotic peacocks can be seen through the study window, heads bobbing up and down as they wander around on impeccable lawns. It is an extraordinary environment. In these conditions, Dr Barnett’s belief he can ‘change the mould and develop a new breed of middle-class footballer’ seems entirely plausible.
The Australian connection


Dr Barnett’s conversion from rugby to football came in Australia. ‘In 1996 I went out to a school in Parramatta,’ he says. ‘I was walking round the grounds and it was rugby as far as you could see – rugby match after rugby match after rugby match. But then I turned the corner and there was soccer being played. So I thought, if they can do it…’
Convinced that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, Dr Barnett looked for a coach and found Colin Pates, the Chelsea and Arsenal centre-back, who had retired with a knee injury. A posh school in the suburbs is not where you’d expect to find a hard-bitten former pro, and Pates admits: ‘Whitgift is quite alien to some of us, because we had state school educations. It was intimidating, and not just for the boys.’ But he jumped at the opportunity.
‘The headmaster asked me to take a sixth-form team on Wednesday afternoons,’ he says. ‘I asked if there were any goalposts, pitches, teams or even footballs, and we didn’t have anything. So we had to start from scratch, pretty much teach them the rules. They were rugby boys playing football, so these were quite aggressive games. But after three years we introduced fixtures and we’ve never looked back.’
Introducing football to a rugby school for the first time in 350 years was no easy task and Pates admits that ‘there was always a concept that we’d bring in swearing and fighting, but we’ve had none of that. History told me it was going to be very difficult to change people’s attitudes, but if you know you’ve got the support from the top man, the head, you can slowly change the perception of football.’ And the Headmaster – motivated by ‘old-fashioned esprit de corps’ as well as the desire to have the newly fashionable sport of football on the syllabus – gave it his full support.
As football cascaded through the school, the coaching team expanded to include John Humphrey, a right-back for Charlton and Crystal Palace, and Steve Kember, the former Chelsea and Palace midfielder. ‘It showed that we were engaging with how we would be a football school, but a different kind of football school,’ says Dr Barnett. ‘What I wanted to do was provide discipline and a serious education. We wanted to tell footballers who were coming to Whitgift: “Yes, but…” and the “but” is that you are going to work.’
The coming of Moses
Whitgift began to offer scholarships and bursaries to help parents of talented young players pay the £13,266 annual fee. It also established an informal relationship with Crystal Palace, with some of the club’s outstanding talent getting recommended for places at the school. David Muir, Education and Welfare Officer at Crystal Palace, explains ‘Whitgift is flexible and open-minded,’ he says. ‘Private schools are generally better than state schools at supporting the academies, offering excellent sports training and balancing that with academic work.’
By 2007, two Whitgift pupils (Victor Moses and Lee Hills) were in the Palace first team. But education was still paramount. ‘A lot of these boys are outstanding academically even if some of them can come here with what appears to be a relatively low IQ,’ says Dr Barnett. ‘But if you work with them and give them belief and encouragement, they can soar.’
Moses, now playing in the Premier League with Wigan, arrived at the school as an 11-year-old orphaned asylum seeker from Nigeria predicted to get no GCSEs at A-C and ended it as an England youth international with GCSE results above the national average. Dr Barnett is adamant that a good education and football skills are mutually beneficial. ‘We did a correlation study on pupils’ academic expectation on entry and then factored in how much they participate outside the classroom,’ he says. ‘And those boys that were more heavily involved in sport did far better academically – quite the reverse of what you might expect. Received wisdom is that if you do too much sport, you’ll damage their education, but that wasn’t the case.’
As for what education can do for your football, he cites the words of an FA Cup-winning manager, who watched Whitgift win the Schools Cup in 2005, when they beat Healing School 5-0 (Moses scored all five). ‘Lawrie McMenemy said to me that if he’s got a choice between a footballer without a brain and a footballer with a brain, he’ll always go for the one with a brain, because he knows he’ll follow instructions and understand tactics and you’ll get far more from him.’
Muir says that  ‘previously, you were either seen as a sportsman or an academic, but our best players have always had the potential to be high-achievers academically as well.’ This backs up Dr Barnett’s claim that ‘the managers of the academies want their boys at Whitgift. Because as well as getting good football training and terrific facilities, they’re going to get discipline and they’re going to get structure and they’re going to get their qualifications.’

It is this that will provide the new type of footballer desired by Dr Barnett. ‘You know that if they were in the state sector they would get lost. Football would be all they had and they’d probably end up with nothing, no career and no qualifications; here, they can end up with 10 GCSEs and still make it as a footballer. And that is one of the key differences in how they will conduct themselves on the pitch  and what image they provide for football. If you get enough kids doing this, you could change things.’
The movement is gathering place. Other private schools – including local rival Trinity and Ardingly College in Sussex – have started to follow Whitgift’s lead.
Finding the kids
So how does Whitgift recruit its talent? Muir says that ‘Palace put forward one or two players every year. We have to find kids who are both outstanding footballers and with a potential to do well academically because they have to pass the entrance exam. The parents pay the fees, though they can be helped by scholarships or wealth-related bursary schemes.’
Other relationships are less formal, and sometimes clubs foot the fees. And sometimes, the players are already at Whitgift before the clubs spot them such as Stefan Amokwandoh, a 13-year-old at Charlton.
A close relationship between school and academy is vital. The school’s fixtures are played midweek to avoid clashing with academy games, while academies benefit from the high standard of coaching the players get from the school.
Whitgift insists that all pupils play in school fixtures, compete in all sports and do their homework. ‘I have to work harder than the other boys at Chelsea,’ says Joel Witele, a 14-year-old who also excels at rugby. ‘When I get homework I have to concentrate and make sure I do it.’
For those football academies accused in a recent book (‘Every Boy’s Dream’ by Chris Green) of offering too many boys nothing but disappointment and educational underachievement, you can see why Whitgift is so attractive.
‘Look Sir, no litter!’
The notion of privately educated footballers no longer seems strange to Pates and Humphrey, even if it must to some of the school teams they come up against (‘We played a local state school,’ said Pates, ‘and one kid said: “Look Sir, no litter!’). Humphrey says: ‘We have quite a few guys at Charlton [where he is an academy coach] who go to private schools. If you have two boys of the same ability, you pick the brighter one because they’ll learn quicker, so we’re moving away from state schools monopolising football. There’s a lot of money out there, and parents want to give their kids the best education they can.’
Pates agrees: ‘A lot of footballers are sending their kids to independent schools. Working-class parents are earning money and putting their kids through private school. We’ve had [Brentford manager] Andy Scott’s boy here, Ian Wright’s boy, Steve Coppell’s – there are lots of them and its spreading into football.’
Muir concurs: ‘It’s great to see the kids get an opportunity I never had. It’s not what people might perceive of from an independent school, it’s not a bunch of boys with plums in their mouths, it’s just normal kids whose parents want them to do really well and provide them the best opportunity to do so.’
Another motivation for Pates and Humphrey is the experiences they had as players. ‘A lot of players from our generation had nothing to fall back on when they came out our game,’ says Pates. ‘There was also nothing in place when we were young – if you didn’t make it, that was that. So we ensure that our players have the opportunity to be everything they want to be, even when they leave. Rhys Coleman was released by Charlton, went to Glenn Hoddle’s academy in Spain and played professionally for Jerez FC. When he came back, we got him at Crystal Palace and he was doing great for the reserve team. It’s like aftercare. We try and help.’ Another former pupil managed to put himself through university with the money he earned from semi-professional football.
It’s all part of a package that Pates and Dr Barnett believe to be unprecedented. ‘You have to be an exceptional footballer to make it these days,’ says Pates. ‘So we want to give them the best opportunity to be a footballer, but also give them a magnificent education so if they don’t sign scholarship forms they have something to fall back on. It works for us, it works for the academies and it works for the families.’
The question now is will it work for football.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Coleman joins Hoddle Academy

Coleman joins Hoddle Academy

Rookie footballer Rhys Coleman has received a boost in his bid to break into the professional ranks after receiving a scholarship to the Glenn Hoddle Academy, based in the Montecastillo resort in Jerez, Spain.

The 19-year-old starlet from South Croydon has joined a squad of players who all share the goal of a career at the very highest levels of the game, with all the scholars selected following trials at Chelsea’s training ground in May.
Coleman and his squad-mates now face a five-week coaching and development programme in Spain, all under the watchful eye of former England manager Hoddle and his coaching team.
The players have the opportunity to reach their full potential thanks to a development plan which ensures the players receive personal coaching from Hoddle and his team as well as the opportunity to undertake a specially designed degree course through a partnership with Leeds Met Carnegie University.
The players will also be taking Spanish lessons to prepare them for a career which may involve playing for Spanish or other top-flight European clubs as they fulfil their ambition of playing at the highest levels.
Hoddle said: “Rhys impressed me with his all-round ability during the selection process and I am delighted that he has signed a full-time contract with the academy. He not only demonstrated his ability with the ball but also his willingness to learn - something critical to his future success as we work with him to develop his skills and prepare him for a footballing future.
“We now have the nucleus of our first year squad of players, but our door is always open for new players to join the academy and we will continue to host trials throughout Europe as more and more players are released from clubs before they have reached their full potential.”