With such a big potential catchment area for young talent, scouting the local leagues could be key
Once upon a time, the best footballers in the land - and possibly even the best footballer in the world - were discovered playing in local parks. Swansea's history is built around players who were discovered playing on the green spaces of our fair city - both the Allchurch and Charles brothers were first noticed in this manner, and you can't even begin to speculate how many other footballers were picked up in this way over the years. Football was once built on scouts picking up young talent from parks and greens, but as the beautiful game has developed we've lost this aspect of the scouting process as the whole system has become more organised and streamlined.
That's not to say it's entirely a bad thing. The Swans have an academy now and we're intent on producing our own talent, which I'm sure we will do, and the "academy model" does indeed seem to work. I can't help but feel though that more of a happy medium could be struck, and that - in our case anyway - we could be making more of the talent pool at our disposal. We have the entire of West Wales to capitalise on, and as we're currently the only Premier League club in Wales you'd have to expect us to carry a fair bit of sway right across the country. Ok, Cardiff and perhaps Liverpool-supporting areas of North Wales may be out of bounds but as to everywhere else - why not?
As someone who's played in the Carmarthenshire League and the Neath League (I sadly had to retire through injury curtailing my stellar local league career before I could play in the Swansea Senior League, thus completing the set), I can honestly say I saw, or was aware of any involvement from the Swans in terms of scouting those league systems. I never really played regularly at the top level of either of the leagues I featured in, but I know people who have and who have coached in them for years and again there doesn't seem to have been much communication in terms of relating information about promising young players.
The Swans are currently expanding though. We're seeing football camps being run in the valleys and also in West Wales, which I think is excellent work. I'd hope though, if there isn't already something similar in place, that we look to develop a relationship with all the clubs in the local league systems, in order that we're made aware of any prospective young talent long before other big clubs come snooping.
When I say "develop a relationship with all local league clubs" I'm firmly aware that's nigh on impossible. I do think though that perhaps some kind of monthly report on each league relayed to our scouting system, where top-performing and emerging talent are highlighted, could be of massive benefit to us - especially with the academy system expanding at pace. I say all this because I once read that the South Wales local football network is the biggest in the UK in terms of participating players, and when you look at the amount of leagues listed here (link) that's easily believable.
If you go as far east as Bridgend and everything West/North of that I count 48 leagues with teams turning out. Even if you assume there's only eight teams per league that's 4,224 footballers turning out in South Wales every weekend. Surely there are some wonderkids going unseen somewhere? One thing I would mention that I have heard repeated on a number of occasions is that, historically, you had to be playing for the right clubs in the local leagues at a young age to get into the Swansea schoolboy setup. West End is a name I've heard mentioned, but when you look at their track record of success it'd be hard to argue that by selecting their best young players you aren't getting the best of the local talent anyway. What's more, with our shift towards "Category One" status for our academy I very much doubt we'd exclude any club or player based on where they're playing.
Whether there has been a geographical prevalence in terms of our scouting in the past I honestly can't say, but it certainly seems the Swans are looking to spread their wings in terms of player recruitment now. As mentioned we've been running football camps and I'd be surprised if we aren't already doing the things I've mentioned above if I'm honest. I just hate the idea that there's a fifteen-year-old somewhere in West Wales scoring hat-tricks every game who ends up going to a "big club" because we didn't have someone watching that corner of our fair country. We've seen players coming to us this summer because they believe we're a club who gives young players a chance, and if we can make our presence felt across West Wales I'm sure the number of quality youngsters coming through our ranks will increase exponentially.
It could also be argued that, geographically, we're fantastically placed to make the most of young talent, as we're without a rival Premier League club for...quite a few miles in any direction (about 130 by my reckoning). As detailed in this excellent image provided by our stats guru. It clearly illustrates that, unless you count Spurs having all of Norfolk to play with the Swans have a far larger "Premier League-less" area to work with.
Ok, it's not the most densely populated area but it is one in which we can realistically look to build a long term fan base. All the fans who, traditionally, have casually supported one of the "big" sides may suddenly find themselves tempted by Premier League football only an hour or two away and in their home country. Every season we stay in the Premier League this will happen more and more.
There will be purists who will say "we don't want that type of fan" but if it helps cultivate a long term connection with most of Wales that's good by me. These are people who will have children who grow up watching the Swans playing in the Premiership on TV (all going well), and going back to my original point if those children are playing in their local league system they'll be much more likely to fancy a move to the Swansea youth setup if they've grown up supporting the Swans. If we've got a continued and occasionally visible presence across the entire country, that's so much easier to foster.
As I've said, it's quite possible we're already doing most of if not all of these things. I'm very glad we're organising football camps across the country - and even ones in Bristol - but surely there's enough talent at our disposal in our own neck of the woods. It may just be a case of looking in the right places.