Dowson fears for Academy lads who don’t make it

PHIL Dowson fears top-flight English rugby could go the way of Premier League football and leave an increasing number of youngsters with a damaging combination of broken dreams and poor education.

Experienced Worcester back rower Dowson, 34, capped seven times by England, believes the growing emphasis on clubs fielding a minimum number of English Qualified Players (EQPs) is prompting them to sign rising numbers of promising players at increasingly young ages.

Dowson says he now sees too many teenagers putting their eggs in just one basket – and is warning that clubs must be wary of how they treat such aspiring players.

Dowson believes the recruitment and education of young academy players needs to be more carefully monitored.

“As the game gets bigger and the money gets bigger, clubs start to look further afield for younger and younger players,” said Dowson, below, who started his career at Newcastle before moving to Northampton and now Worcester.

“A big issue is education. When I first started playing I’d have people like Doddy Weir and Gary Armstrong saying to me at Newcastle ‘What are you doing at uni?’ and I said ‘I’m not doing uni, I’m going to concentrate on rugby and I can always go back to uni’. Now I ask young players ‘What are you doing for Alevels?’ and they say they’re not doing them. “So the education is peeling off as these guys come in younger and younger and it’s a concern. “They are foregoing their education to come into academies and sadly not all of those academy boys are going to make it.”

Dowson believes the Premiership needs to be on its guard against slipping into the methods deployed in Premier League academies.

“You’ve seen it in football: Chelsea bring in 200 young kids and sell them that dream of being Eden Hazard. One guy makes it and Chelsea are happy, but the other 199 haven’t got a GCSE between them and what happens to those kids?

“I can just see that beginning to happen a little bit in rugby. More academy lads come in and training full time because that’s what they want, and why wouldn’t they? But if you don’t make it, what happens next?

“The RPA and a few companies are getting stuck into it but the issue of the education of young players would be my biggest concern.

“The principle of EQPs is important so we have a lot of English players at a high standard but that maybe has a knock-on effect with the take-in at academies.”