Was good football all round I thought, and bodes well for future PDL and MPL teams.
Sounds good on a blog/paper.
Fact is most of these kids will have given football away by 18 or 19 years old.
The job of clubs gets made harder because after this age they go and play for school on Saturday plus need to get jobs.
Harsh on the schools TBH. We have 6 schools playing saturday competition (rightly or wrongly, thats another kettle of fish). You've still got the likes of Hillmorton, Cashmere, St Thomas', Middleton Grange, Linwood and a few other state schools who aren't involved in the saturday leagues and have some decent footballing talent in their school roll.
Yes some kids will go and play for one of those 6 schools, thats their choice (except for christs college), but theres also a sizable chunk who stay with their clubs coz they know they'll be better off and playing at a higher level (ie: 14, 15 D1 or PDL for a few).
I'd be more worried about the kids giving up the game fullstop. Work is a reason for some, but things such as refereeing (or lack of), lack of club focus on their age group or not quite being in that top X% may also be the reasons we as a sport need to address.