How the Cork City academy system gives young players  the 'best possible chance’

A GOOD foundation is the basis of every successful endeavour in life. 

Everything revolves around a good foundation and the same principle applies to football. For a club to have a great senior team, they must invest in youth because it is from there talent emerges.

There is no doubt that football academies are very important.

Since the inaugural women’s national league season in 2011, clubs around the country have been responsible for providingexcellent talent for these sides but now clubs are looking to recruit nearer to home.

In that I mean, having club academies of their own where they can nurture and monitor players while preparing them to play the same style of football which is expected when they reach the level of first-team football.

Recently, I caught up with Cork City senior women’s manager Danny Murphy who spoke of the importance of academies and how he wishes to increase the profile of his first team players.

“The U17 academy was set up in 2018 and since has added an U19s. From this academy we have 17 from the current 25 first-team players who came through that academy and the future continues to look bright with exceptional young talent coming through.”

So how does a young aspiring footballer start her journey with Cork City?

“Currently, we run trials for the girls academy and we also do targeted recruitment of players by watching games and talking with the FAI regional talent centres,” said Murphy.

“We have big numbers of girls who want to join but we only take 20 girls per age group as we feel this keeps it at a high standard.

“So since taking over the first season I just watched how it was run and what we could do to improve it.

“This season we made some changes to the structure of how we are set up. We now have separate managers and coaches in the U17 and U19 teams, both will look to play same formation and style as the first team, and we have clearer pathways to senior team.

“The aim of the academy is to develop the girls both technically and tactically to give them the best possible chance to achieve making it to the women’s first team.

The academy will always be our first area for recruitment to the first team and as a club we will always look here first.

“We feel having a girls academy is the best way to develop our overall structure in development and progress to become one of the elite teams in the country.

“There are plenty of things we want to still improve and develop, we want to build better relationships with the Cork schoolgirls league and the clubs who will always be the first place girls will go to play.Without them, the schoolgirls clubs investing their time and resource in girls football, it would make things very hard for players to reach their dreams of becoming a professional football. So working with them is very important to us.”

Since Murphy has joined the club, there has been massive changes but most noticeably is the interaction of first team players with local programmes.

Recently, some first team players attended the exceptional underage tournament that was hosted by Ringmahon, and Murphy feels strongly about this.

I feel very strongly about our players attending as many events and programmes as they can. I believe Cork people should know who the players are.

“We have to raise their profiles as players and by asking the girls to give up their free time to help young girls have someone to aspire to is all part of raising the profile.

“My first day at Cork City training in Ringmahon, we turned up and there was around 100 kids there, but sadly not one person knew who the girls were and that really shocked me.

“Since then, we have tried to raise the girls’ profiles but we also need help from our sponsors to help do this .

“We believe we are in a good place to have more future internationals come through our academy and now we have to continue to develop each team and individual to give them the best possible chance to achieve their goals.”