And the numbers for ACFC speak for themselves last season too.
Auckland City easily won the Youth League with the recruitment process they went through last year.
The Club had open trails last season they just chose different options than you maybe think they could of to make potential players aware of them.
Maybe they only wanted players of the standard that had already been identified by NZU20s or maybe the Coach last season sought advice about potential players from Chris Milicich.
So this year more Ellerslie players trailed but only 2 made it so either way the numbers maybe say more about the Standard of Ellerslie's players than the percieved flaws in ACFC's recruitment process.
Just a question for you though, Last winter Season Central Utd played Ellerslie 1st team 3 times, Reserves twice, and U19s twice so do you not think its safe to assume that the ACFC Youth Coach (Who also coaches 1st Team and 19s at Central Utd) would of had enough chance to identify any players he would be interested in for NYL?
Central Utd U19s easily won the U19 Winter Comp in Auckland last season.
With Onehunga Sports and Three Kings Utd 2nd and 3rd respectively.
And Three Kings Utd won the ACFC U17 Tournament as well as the Metro U17 Comp
Its surely no coincedence that players from these 3 clubs take up 22 of the 30 places in the ACFC Youth squad.
I understand that you want the opportunity for as many of your players as possible to have an a chance to play NYL (Which is probably more just as much a benefit to Ellerslie than ACFC if they do make the squad)
it is only my opinion so yeah your right others may disagree - and your right they went out and won the league and were comfortably better than any other team.
Just to clarify I never said Ellerslie deserved to have players there by right - and I never insisted that Ellerslie players should def be in the team - I simply wanted some of the guys who I felt were deserving of a trial to be looked at, if no-one had made the team I would have been satisfied with that (I'm not on here saying that Chris doesn't know what he is doing - i think he is a fine judge of talent and I am happy to go with what he has selected).
Again i'm fine if ACFC wanted to go fishing in the U20's pond last year - like you said seemed to work for them.
There are parts of your statement that are not quite right - Open trials - no sorry, they were by invite only trials last season - again it's ACFC's prerogative on how they do this but let's keep facts as facts and fiction as fiction.
I did say I thought the way they went about it this year was much better and a more inclusive way to do it - one point of view might be that since they were so good last year why change this year??? someone obviously thought this way was better??
Last Winter we did play Central's first team 3 times - their reserves twice and their U19's teams more than twice each, as a counter argument here is it wise to so closely mention ACFC and Central in the same sentence, if I had written that i would (and have previously) been told in no uncertain terms they are totally 100% separate. anyway to answer the question yeah I guess so but going forward what if he isn't the same coach, should the process change? Isn't Chris stepping down at the end of this summer season anyway from some of those roles?
ah - not sure where the U17's and U19's really comes into it too much, but for the sake of accuracy you forgot Three Kings winning the Napier U19's Tournament. Anyway off the top of my head none of the guys we nominated for ACFC played in either of those teams this season - they were all First Team/Reserves players (we have quite a young first team/reserves setup).
For interests of accuracy Ellerslie finished 2nd in the Metro 17's
Ellerslie finished 6th of 7 in the top of the U19's Conference league - Three Kings finished 5th - Western Springs 3rd. in the grading round Ellerslie actually finished 3rd behind Oratia and Onehunga Sports with Central and Three Kings 4th and 5th.
anyway like I said it's only my opinion and it's a little odd that we are having this discussion based on me saying I thought ACFC had done a good job this year... however you raised some good points and it was good discussing this issue with you.