Emley academy chief Sam Sutton wants to improve his own impressive track record by producing talented future stars for Richard Tracey’s first team over the coming years.
Former Huddersfield under 19s manager Sutton is leading Emley’s rebooted youth development section – starting with an under 23s side which plays its first home game on Monday night – with his assistants Pete Walker and Alex Overton.
The young trio already helped produced a long line of Non League players and they want to add to Emley’s youth success stories which include Jordan Townend and Ruben Jerome who came through the ranks during the Darren Hepworth era.
“Myself, Alex Overton and Pete Walker been together for four years or so and we’re all 24,” Sutton told Non League Yorkshire.
“We worked together at Huddersfield YMCA and had a good success. For quite a young management team we feel we have had a positive impact on some players who have gone on to achieve things.
“Four of our players are playing Northern Premier League football. Dom Claxton is at Pontefract Collieries. Eddie Church is doing really well at Brighouse and he’s banging the goals in and starting most weeks. Jack Tinker, a full-back, has joined Brighouse from Shelley. We had a lad called Sam Awty who has signed for Ponte.
“There’s a further three playing NCEL football so we had some real success with developing players there and we have all come to Emley with a similar vision and we now have a first team to promote them to.
“It goes without saying that getting players into the first team is what we will be primarily judged on.That’s 12 months, two years, how many players have made the step up from our team through to the first team. Hopefully we will have had a few.
“We have a good relationship with Richard Tracey and the first team staff. They have been really supportive since we’ve come. The pathways will be there. It is just about identifying the players who will be good enough and the players taking the opportunities when they come.
“Emley has a good history of developing players and I remember a few years when I was at a previous club and we played an under 19s side up at Emley and they were always strong.
“There was that pathway to the first team and the purpose of our academy that we have set up is borne out of that it hasn’t been there over the last couple of years and we wanted to bring it back to life. Hopefully we will see some more names like Ruben Jerome in future.”
Emley’s and Sutton’s grand plan goes deeper than just the under 23s though.
“We’re an under 23s side at the minute, but we aim to grow with a few more teams in the coming years,” he said.
“We’ve linked with a local private academy called HD Select who are based in Silkstone. Since they partnered with us they have rebranded to become a Junior Premier League Regional Talent Centre.
“The Junior Premier League is the best league outside of academy football for young players from the age of nine up to the age of 18.
“We’ve partnered with them and that will see their players graduate into our 23s and an under 19s team which hope to start next year.
“As a club we had an under 19s and under 21s before, but we never had anything below that. This partnership has brought that to life where there is now a clear pathway for players to join the regional talent centre at nine-year-old and hopefully in ten years’ time be in a position where they can be competing for a first team place. That would be the dream.”
Sutton’s under 23s are hoping to play their first home West Riding County FA Development League Championship South game on Monday when Tadcaster Golds are due to visit the Welfare Ground.
Explaining the reason behind choosing to play an under 23s league instead of the under 21s, Sutton said: “It is a difficult age and we are an under 23s team, but really we like to keep our players under 21.
“We will have a few players older than that who we consider as late developers who have slipped through the net.
“Primarily we are looking at lads who are 18, have finished college and they are going into apprenticeships, into trades and risk dropping out of the game if they are not ready for first team football.
“Under 18 or under 19s football to first team football is a big jump so I think the 23s is a nice stepping stone where they can continue their development at a good level and decent levelled clubs where they have a chance breaking through.
“We’ve now been up and running as an academy for three months. We launched back in February and had a few roadworks because of Covid, but we got the trials underway in July.
“We took a group of players through pre-season in August and September and then we started our league campaign on the 28th September. We’ve been going for a month with competitive football and we’re approaching our first competitive home game on Monday.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams. As we slowly return to ‘action’, our work will play an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
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