You asked me if I was willing to express my thoughts about the difficult environment currently prevailing at Wolves FC, and ordinarily I would be reluctant to, but I must express my real disappointment at the attitude, behaviour and lack of respect the current Committee have afforded my close friend and colleague, Sam Saif, other Senior Coaching staff, including two life members and myself, who for the last 8 years have given loyal and selfless service to the Club. The comments of late from various Wolves Officials suggest that the Senior Coaching Staff, and players had no interest, involvement or engagement with the junior side of the Club over the tenure of Sam and myself. This can only be described as mind shatteringly ignorant or a blatant attempt to discredit the huge amount of time and effort Staff and Players have spent in this area. The wording within the recent announcement of the Senior Coach, and remarks in the local newspaper typifies this with a veiled attempt to criticise those departing Coaches with little or no involvement outside the senior ranks: “With this holistic view and want for better integration throughout the club we can fulfil our vision to become ONE CLUB, which is prominent and well respected in the community and in football……to ensure our players have a football path at the club.” Senior First Team Coach Announcement August 2014 “The development of the whole club, which goes right down to juniors comes down to your senior coach, and we felt under Sam if you went past the senior team, we were going backwards.” Richard Tarnawski, Wolves FC President - BRISBANE EAST NEWS, QUEST NEWSPAPERS, AUGUST 02, 2014 These statements are somewhat disingenuous to say the very least, and in my opinion an attempt to convey that none existed before, and that the senior Coaches never created or promoted opportunities for junior players to advance within the Club, or indeed to other external senior pathways that may present themselves from time to time! Why do I say this! Well I am someone that looks at Stats and draws logical conclusions from those, so here are some that will clearly dispel any myths that Wolves wasn’t “One Club” and didn’t, until next season, offer a pathway for juniors to senior football! Player Pathway The following names are of players who have all played in the Clubs Youth team, during Sam’s and my time at the Club, and then have gone on to play for the first team over that 8 year period (This includes preseason comps and Club Representative games against Brisbane Roar and West Sydney Wanderers) Most before they turned 18: 1. Eden Visca 2. Nick Wilson 3. Josh Swan 4. Harry Black 5. Ned Bowden 6. Brody Sams 7. Liam Gracey 8. Luke Wakefield 9. Brandon Lang 10. Claudio Ramano 11. Kristen Waters 12. Scott Duncan 13. Sam Innes 14. Tim Jackson 15. Josh Edson 16. Aiden Reimers 17. Min – lee 18. Amara Kromah 19. Coey Turipa 20. Alex Warrilow 21. Cor Mijok 22. Terrel Augustine 23. Blake Cearns 24. Alistair Davies 25. Zee Ismailov 26. Matt Jones 27. Tom Torsok 28. Idi Morani 29. Blake Thompson 30. Bradley Savage 31. Alex Janovsky 32. Damien Jennings 33. Jordan Pollard 34. Mitch Elmsie 35. Cameron Legg Opportunities have also included two of those mentioned above, who have subsequently gaining scholarships to the USA to study and play football, another was signed by Birmingham City Academy in the UK. Indeed the majority of the 2012 Youth Team played in a prestigious overseas Youth Competition (Weifang Cup) in China against professional Academy sides from all over Asia and Europe, again with our assistance and support of the then Youth Team Coach. Junior Coaching In addition to these names I can also advise you that the following 1st Team and Reserve grade players and Coaches were encouraged and did coach junior grade sides at the Club, as well as the Small Sided Development Programme over the last 8 years. This was deliberately done to create a bond/connection between the two arms of the Club: 1. Sam Saif ( 1st Team Coach) BPL U15 Cover Sessions & SSF Development Programme and holiday camps 2. Paul Edwards (1st Team Assist) SSF Development Programme/ U14 BPL preseason/ U16 BPL support sessions 3. Dragan Vilic (U18 BPL Coach) Junior Development Programme 4. Dean Lyell (U18 BPL Coach) Junior Development Programme 5. Tim Walsh 1st Team player - U11 Komodo & SSF Development Programme, Holiday Camps 6. James Richards 1st Team player SSF Development Programme, Holiday Camps 7. Patrick McMahon 1st Team player - U11 Komodo jointly, Holiday Camps 8. JC Aikenhead 1st Team player – U11 Komodo Jointly, Holiday Camps 9. Patrick Hopkins 1st Team player – U11 Komodo Jointly, Holiday Camps 10. Stefan Vroom 1st Team player 11. Zee Ismailov Res Team player - U 12 Div5 12. Jackson Vickers Res Team player - Cubs/Squirts 13. Marko Radovanovic 1st Team player - U12 Div 3 14. Sang Won Seo 1st Team player - SSF Development Programme 15. Chris Knowles 1st Team player - BPL U15 16. David McEvoy 1st Team player - BPL U12 17. Chris Akins Metro 5 Player - BPL U16 18. Matt Carr 1st Team player - Goal Keeping 19. Lucas Zicher 1st Team player - Goal Keeping Youth Development Indeed I recall that members of the 2011 First Team squad presented medals and trophies to junior teams during that seasons break up. Professional Development This is a topic of keen interest to Sam and I, and we organised several free workshops for in house and wider community coaches whilst at the Club. These included sessions conducted by visiting Chelsea, Watford, and Reading Academy coaches as well as Ron Smith the current Roar Assistant! Internally we conducted pre-season coach briefings, grass roots sessions and provided resource material for the Clubs coaches to be placed on the Club website for coaches to login in and access. Again it beggars belief that we are openly criticised that our interests were nothing more than the seniors! Forward Planning This did not happen without some underlying strategy behind it, and indeed as one of my roles at Wolves as the Football Development Manager, I was responsible for developing a plan to prepare the Club for the new BPL competition and beyond. This did take account of the introduction of the new NPL and potential exodus of players to this elite competition. The plan was drawn up over a two stage process, firstly in consultation with key coaching stake holders such as the then, Junior Coordinator Bernie Crew, Grass Roots Coordinator Phil Engstrom, Youth Team Coach Dragan Vilic and other knowledgeable coaches of standing at the Club ( all current officials) and secondly, the Football Committee. I do accept that plans change from time to time, and new directions taken, but it’s however not correct to suggest that nothing was done to look systematically at the “whole Club”! Club engagement / Volunteering I also note from time to time the general vibe from some folk in the Football Community to muse that senior squads are merely a cost on the juniors! Again I would like to dispel this rumour as far as Wolves goes! We introduced a number of initiatives aimed at reducing that perceived burden and engendering Club spirit such as; • individual player sponsorships, • Weekly raffles on Friday, Saturday mornings, and Saturday afternoons before and after during senior games. Senior players sold meat tray raffle tickets • Help staff BBQ’s outside Masters Hardware, • Attending all fundraising activities, • Securing Sponsors for the senior section • Creating a field hire policy and securing new patrons • Visiting schools when asked to promote the Club • Team and volunteer of the month awards , half time skills challenge ,as well as the open invite to the wolves family breakfast with an opportunity to eat with the BPL players Communication One of the key areas in engaging the clubs juniors was to provide a regular flow of timely communication of information and events as they related to juniors and seniors, but always keeping club members appraised and subsequently connected. In conjunction with the club secretary this was achieved through weekly bulletins throughout the whole season and not on a sporadic ad hoc basis as currently being witnessed in 2014. Many reading this would think that these things should be happening as a matter of course, but it doesn’t without real effort and the negative and untrue innuendo at the senior cohort is shameful, especially when (I sadly have to remark that ) little or no activity regarding fund raising outside the seniors took place, thus resulting in the Clubs 2013 Committee’s decision to levy a compulsory fundraising fee against juniors as a result of their lack of engagement! I know that this is a long response but you can see from this that its more than a little galling to see these remarks trip of the Clubs lips without any real evidence in my opinion to back those statements up. I hope that this somewhat cleared the water, and any failings that the Current Committee perceive they have with the unity and holistic approach required at the Club are in my opinion all of their own making. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 10:04:05 +0000
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