A whoLe geNeR
Talent-spotter Park warns Hibs hierarchy that sacrificing youth academy will backfire £15M ANd COuNTINg: BuMpeR HARVeST
John Park, the club’s former talent spotter, knew he had some good young players back in 2002.
The energy and industry of scott Brown and Kevin Thomson in midfield was relentless.
Derek riordan was small, but a finisher. With the muscular Garry O’Connor to do the heavy lifting, the makings of a decent first-team forward line were there.
Tall and rangy, steven Whittaker had the physique and ability to play anywhere in defence.
Hibs had a decision to make about the future of their academy players. Then, as now, they were motivated by a desire to cut costs and become a more efficient club.
Then, unlike now, the decision was made to hand the kids their wings and let them fly.
‘There was no question we had the best young players in the country,’ Park tells now. ‘There were plenty of them coming through.
‘i remember talking to the chairman rod Petrie one day when he was saying we couldn’t sustain a policy of buying jerseyfiller players all the time.
‘He said to me: “What should we do?” i said to him: “We have the youth players here, rod”.
‘And i will never forget him standing up, putting his hand across the table, shaking my hand and saying: “right, that’s it. Let’s go for it”.
‘We played the youth players and made a conscious decision to give them an opportunity.’
Facing cuts and redundancies as a consequence of coronavirus, these are dark days for the Hibernian youth academy. in that respect, they’re not alone.
Motherwell and others have already spoken to the sFA about the cost of maintaining an elitelevel academy under Project Brave.
With no gate income coming in, employing full-time youth coaches is a crippling outlay.
reducing coaches to part-time hours could see the sFA withdraw the Club Academy scotland funding given to elite teams. sticking with it could drive stricken clubs closer to the wall.
The fear now is that Hibernian will revert to the way they were when Park left Motherwell to follow Alex McLeish to Easter road in 1998.
Back at ground zero with no youth set-up to speak of.
‘it was my job to build it from scratch and i just got stuck in,’ recalls Park. ‘We covered Edinburgh and started employing a lot of good people.
‘Gordon rae, Dave McMillan came in, and the number of centres we opened exploded.
‘At one point in time we were running youth-development centres in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Bathgate, Edinburgh and Fife.
‘We were actually going to them rather than them having to come to us.
‘if clubs in these areas were not willing to work at finding young talent, then my view was that we were.
‘so we got stuck into it with staff and minibuses and kept hiring good coaches.
‘in the summer, we kept the whole scheme running in the central belt and Bathgate so that we utilised the good weather to keep the kids involved.
‘We would bring them in and play games and get different centres playing each other.
‘The parents loved that as well because, in the summer, their kids were occupied and they got out to watch them develop and play games. it was important to Hibernian.’
Things seemed simpler then. And Project Brave was designed to professionalise the whole business.
There are some who think the sFA should be nowhere near centralised youth development.
rather than establishing performance schools and employing performance directors and regional coaches, some clubs believe the governing body should simply distribute grassroots funding to clubs and allow them to plough their own furrow. Much as things were when current sFA president Petrie was Park’s boss at Hibs.
‘There was scott Brown, Kevin Thomson, riordan, Whittaker, O’Connor, steven Fletcher,’ he tells
‘Jamie McCluskey was a fantastic talent — we thought he would go to the next level.
‘We started seeing some results when Bobby Williamson started giving these kids a first-team chance.
‘We had a good team. We beat Celtic 2-1 in a League Cup quarter-final at Easter road.
‘Then we drew rangers in the semi and beat them on penalties with all the young kids in the team.
‘What was magnificent for me was that the Hibs supporters were brilliant with the youngsters and really egged them on.
‘They were delighted to see their own coming through the system. And we had good players there to help them.’
Hibernian lost that League Cup final in 2004 to Livingston.
slowly building something, however, they reaped the benefits of Park’s development work when they finished third in the league in season 2004-05 under Tony Mowbray.
Thomson, Brown, Whittaker, riordan and O’Connor were each helped by the likes of Gary Caldwell, David Murphy, ivan sproule and Guillaume Beuzelin and, in 2006/07, they ended a 15-year wait for a major trophy when they hammered Kilmarnock 5-1 in the League Cup final.
By then, O’Connor had already gone to Lokomotiv Moscow for £1.6million, Celtic had snapped up riordan, and scott Brown and Kevin Thomson were attracting attention from both sides of Glasgow.
Hibs would rake in over £8m from those four alone and, when Park left to become football development manager at Celtic, they struggled to replicate the same success.
The club’s last major sale was John McGinn, a player developed by st Mirren.
Yet Park still believes a youth academy is a prize worth fighting for, arguing that closing down the youth system he strived to build would be an act of self-harm.
‘reserve-team football is under threat as well and that’s sad because, in my time at Hibernian, there was nothing better than Monday night at Easter road and free entry to reserve games for fans,’ he adds.
‘We were getting crowds of 3,000 for some reserve games and that was the making of those young men.
‘Playing reserve games on a Monday night under the lights and seeing a pathway ahead.
‘They got a taste of it and played with good players who helped them break through.
‘i’m sure scotty Brown, Kevin, Whitty and Derek riordan would all say they were helped by senior pros telling them what they should and shouldn’t do.
‘We can’t just scrap youth policies. if we do, scottish football will be left with nothing in a year’s time.
‘We’re losing a whole generation here and a small country like ours can’t afford to lose that.’