Loss of Livi youth set-up bad part of Brave new world

An hour or two spent with auld Jimmy McArthur is to take a walk down memory lane.

The legendary Livingston chief scout has a football story for every occasion, and a particularly amusing anecdote of the day he hid in a hedge to run the rule over a teenage striker who’d go on to become a household name.

Just don’t ask auld Jimmy how he’s feeling today.

Project Brave claimed another victim this week as Livingston pulled the plug on their entire youth set-up.

A club which has a history of developing a raft of Scotland stars no longer believes the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to rearing their own.

Friday sounded the death knell for a once prolific conveyor belt of talent as the staff, parents and kids were informed.

There were tears before bedtime across West Lothian as the abomination that is pro- youth footbal l shattered yet more dreams. But the warnings over our dysfunctional development system are ones which the game’s decision-makers refuse to heed.

The bottom line is that Livi can’t justify the cost of running a youth programme in this new world which is geared towards toploading funding towards the elite.

Scottish football’s new threetier academy structure is being rolled out this season and already the complaints are piling up as holes are picked on a pro-youth system which has been a disaster for our game. It’s time to slam on the breaks and think again.

This news comes in a week where SFA performance director Malky Mackay sat down at Hampden and spoke of a positivity and belief young players are now starting to emerge in first teams across the country. He had a point. There’s no doubt he cares deeply about improving our footballing fortunes but the damage has already been done.

Best versus best is the policy in the search of quality but the collateral damage is hard to quantify.

Lower-tier clubs are of the opinion that Project Brave has made it more difficult to get funding for their youth set-ups and easier for the elite.

This re-branded scheme will see more and more youngsters dropping away from the sport and worse still, it leaves others with nowhere left to play. Clubs are ranked on a criteria-based system and an assessment of something called “Me a s u r a b l e P e r f o rma n c e Outcomes” in the Project Brave revamp. But why did consideration of a club’s track record on youth development not come into play? The SFA are now in danger of ostracising some of the country’s most productive youth set-ups by setting the bar too high for inclusion into their new set-up.

Ask the likes of Leigh Griffiths, Graham Dorrans, Robert Snodgrass, Andy Halliday, James McPake, Mur ray Davidson, Stefan Scougall, Mark McNulty, Keaghan Jacobs, Scott Boyd, Richard Brittain, Gary Millar and more recently Marc McNulty about their debt of gratitude to auld Jimmy and Livi’s academy.

Another talent factory shuts its doors and there’s nothing brave about a project where blind eyes will be turned.

Three-tier academy structure is being rolled out and the complaints are piling up