If you follow the Football League, then you might have heard of Lamar Reynolds.
Reynolds enjoyed a meteoric rise from non-league football to signing a professional contract with Newport County in League Two back in July.
The 22-year-old winger appeared in 14 matches for the Welsh side this season, scoring once, before returning to east London to join Leyton Orient on a loan deal.
But one club was crucial in his development, and that is Barking Football Club.
Reynolds joined Barking FC at the age of 16 and made his way through to the main team, earning valuable experience by working and playing with a senior side.
I caught up with Barking FC’s Chairman, Rob O’Brien and Vice-Chairman Mick O’Shea, to get a better understanding of how the club managed to create such a good reputation at developing players in the area.
Cohesive Coaching
One of the questions that immediately came up was how important the youth setup of a non-league club is to the sustainability of its existence, and speaking about this, O’Brien said:
“You can look at that in different ways, from a ‘growing your own’ perspective to having a good name as a football developing club and from a satisfaction point of view, when the lads roll out for the first team here, you can look around and say ‘he’s a scholar, he’s gone through our programme’ and that is very satisfying.’’
The club chairman extended his view on why the academy project has proven to be successful: “We’ve got a tight-knit management team here and we all work together, and to me that is one of the fundamental reasons why these lads progress so well, because we’re all discussing the development of each and every player, so they all get their chances and that gives us an advantage over the bigger clubs that don’t have that tight-knit network. And once a club like us gets a good name for development then the professional clubs will come around.’’
Preparing Lamar Reynolds
Barking FC’s most successful case so far, Lamar Reynolds, was one of the 42 players in Jamie Vardy’s V9 Academy, a training camp set up by England’s striker.
As there is a sense of pride in having had contribution to his development, I asked Rob if he thinks that Reynolds’ senior experience at the club gave him an advantage over other players at the camp. O’Brien said: “I’d like to think so. Lamar got some senior experience quite early on in his career. Myself and Mick worked him hard and tried to give him that experience because that’s what the pros are looking for. So I think we prepared them for that.’’
Successful Partnership
As the methods used to help the players’ development were explained, I used the opportunity to learn more about how and why the academy scheme was set up at the club.
Rob O’Brien explained how he came up with the idea to set-up an education football scholarship at the club: “The idea came to me about 10 years ago, when I was running an under 16’s and 18’s team and I felt that the lads wanted to train for longer, and we realised we could also give them an education, I thought that would be of great benefit to the aspiring footballer and over time we extended our programme to allow them to take A-Levels in any subject such as Economics, Science or even History. We’ve got a fantastic partnership with Sydney Russell School and the Southern Consortium, in which they offer some of the best education in the borough.’’
A proud Rob O’Brien also went on to point out that the partnership between the club and the schools is thriving, as Barking FC lead the U-19 Alliance National League and Sydney Russell are at the top of the attainment table in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham.
Vice Chairman Mick O’Shea also had his take on what makes the academy successful, he said: “A lot of academies don’t cater for the player’s needs outside of football as well as what we do well in the football side of things, and this is important to a parent and it is to a lad who is 16 years old and does not know what he wants to do in the future.’’
An Example
Barking Football Club have played a major part in giving local players the chance to showcase their abilities to professional clubs in the last few years. The Blues have links with Arsenal Football Club and have had players trialing at Brighton & Hove Albion.
With very good facilities at the club and also by being part of a development project that will enhance these facilities even more by 2020, the future looks bright for the Blues as they have a great chance to be seen as one of top player developers in London.
It would be great to see more local clubs follow the example of Barking FC, by giving aspiring footballers the opportunity to conciliate their education and football.
For more information on Academy Trial days, please visit www.barking-fc.co.uk.
