The real talent factory?

Fletcher Moss Rangers have produced a host of Manchester United stars. So shouldn’t they get help? Adam Bate talks to the club’s development officer Dave Horrocks to discuss the struggles of a grass-roots success story and an alternative vision for the future…

Dave Horrocks cried tears of pride when Marcus Rashford burst onto the scene for Manchester United. The development officer at Fletcher Moss Rangers, Rashford’s boyhood club, was understandably proud, but he wasn’t shocked. And that’s not just because of the forward’s extraordinary talent. It’s because Horrocks has seen it before.

This one club in Didsbury has also been a home away from home for Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Tyler Blackett. Before them there was Danny Welbeck and Wes Brown. And that’s just those at Manchester United. In total, Horrocks reckons there are 73 youngsters who’ve been taken on by professional clubs at home and abroad.

“I don’t want to sound blasé,” he tells Sky Sports, “but, no, I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised because of the talent that’s out there in the big wide world. There are a lot of kids out there and because of the organisations they’re with, they’re not being put in the shop window correctly.”

That’s precisely what Fletcher Moss Rangers do. “On the back of our signing-on forms for the parents, we have a one liner that says development is winning,” he adds. “We are not interested in the scores or winning games. Development is the win.” While Horrocks feels the club is about far more than its stars, their recent successes speak volumes.

Professional scouts have become a familiar sight at the club. Rochdale even wanted to take their entire Under-13 team after one friendly game. “We played them off the park,” says Horrocks. In the end there was a compromise. At the end of the season, they took six of the players – and the coach.

There’s a determination not to “jump into bed with any one organisation” for the honourable reason “that all kids can be assessed fairly by everyone”, but the pressures are still there. Five years ago, one Premier League club threatened to “flood all of the games with scouts” and take the lot anyway unless they agreed to affiliate with them. 

“They will bully us until the FA realises that these kids come from somewhere before they get to the academies,” says Horrocks. It’s a recurring frustration. Here’s a grass-roots coach doing a much-needed role in development but he’s hardly acknowledged as being part of the process by those in power.

There’s the memory of Trevor Brooking glazing over when discussing their conflicting definitions of grass roots. “People who are in influential positions such as Trevor Brooking have forgotten where they came from when they were first kicking a football,” he says. “It worries me. I realise how English football has got itself into the state it has got itself into.”

It’s a disconnect that’s a particularly sensitive issue …

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