hello. Firstly, I don't see how my arguments are based on "club affiliation".
You seem to assume my club has some sort of "party line" on Waikato FC when that is not the case at all. Besides, i have been a supporter-member of Waikato - and the old Waikato United and even Hamilton AFC - for decades ahead of relatively recently throwing in my lot with Melville. (At Melville they still think I am a closet Waikato Unicol supporter anyway).
I do however believe something very exciting is happening in the Waikato, as the result of a 4-year football experiment by Declan. I started off somewhat sceptical about the whole premise
that we could replicate a type of football apprenticeship here in our own backyard, but kept an open mind and have gradually been won over by the development I have seen with my own eyes.
If that makes me Eddie in drag, well good on Eddie then. But let's play the ball, not the man, remember. Debate the ideas, not the woolly hat.
As discussion here has unveiled, those full time in the game and training every day have an advantage by the nature of their very input. But we can hardly knock them for such dedication. it's not like they have done anything wrong. Indeed, they have done great.
A couple of weeks ago I watched a waikato FC youth trial game at Gower Park and a member of the Waikato coaching staff - not Declan - came up and said to me: "it's not hard to tell the boys that are working with Declan is it?" I agreed.
In previous years Declan farmed his lads out to various franchises, where he felt they would get a start of their development would be most advanced.
That was quite understandable for someone who has taken on a fulltime role of developing his players. But for me, as club administrator in the waikato it was a growing concern that we had this incongruity of precocious talent bubbling under but doing so outside of what would appear to the natural 'shop window' for the game here in terms of Waikato FC.
Like a lot of coaches, Declan can be very zealous, very uncompromising, and very focused on what he is doing. those qualities are like guns - they can be pointed in lots of directions.
What we needed, in my view, was to have Declan back inside the tent - somewhere declan had wanted to be for years.
Reconciliation was sorely needed, and as fate would have it, a solution came about. In my opinion it has been good from a holistic Waikato perspective to finally have Declan back inside the tent.
I have no doubt there will be the odd blue - as happens most seasons - and Waikato are still underdone, but overall I feel happier about Waikato FC than i have for several years. I say that as a founder member of Waikato FC.
i can see some of Declan's boys moving off beyoind waikato Fc at some point - at which case i expect a rabid chorus of nouth-foaming may start again. But that's part of the life cycle of a game where the participants - players and coaches - tend to be quite transitory. it's usually just us fans that are the constant.
hope this helps.
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