Following the acceptance of both Melbourne A-League youth sides into the National Premier Leagues Victoria (via NPL 1, the second division of the competition), the Corner Flag had a chat to Darren Davies and Joe Palatsides – coaches of Victory and City youth respectively – about their initial reactions towards the implementation and how preparations were coming along for the 2015 season.
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Darren Davies, Melbourne Victory Youth coach
What does the NPL mean to Melbourne Victory Youth?
“It means I won’t get a holiday, that’s the first thing. All jokes aside, it’s fantastic for both clubs that we get all year round competition. It’s about producing players in two, three years time, regardless of how the result [goes]. Our side playing against an older side will bear the fruit in a year or two. And we’re looking for them to be first team players in a year or two.”
How was the squad built?
“We saw this coming six months ago. I sat down with Vaughan [Coveny] and Kevin [Muscat] and that’s why we’ve gone particularly young in this year’s National Youth League, because this is a long-term process and following that they roll into the NPL, and following that, the NYL.
“They [Victory’s new youth recruits] could be playing in the NYL for the next four years if they want to, but we don’t want that, we want them first team players before that. We’ve already started recruiting, we’re not far off, but certainly we’ll be looking to bring in additionals. But as a basis of a squad and as a base for our 30-40 players, we have a significant amount of numbers already in place.”
How important is winning at youth level and earning promotion from NPL 1?
“We do focus on [winning] – obviously we need to teach these boys that winning games matters, but within the Youth League it’s not at all costs. Of course we want to engrain winners, grow winners – we want a winning mentality, and we certainly do that. However, it’s not at all costs, which is slightly different to the first team.
“Is promotion our target? Yes, we do need to grow winners but again it won’t be win at all costs. That statement probably overarches our approach to NPL 1. Yes, we want to win, we want to grow winners, but it won’t be at all costs.”
How will the former NPL players within the squad feel about dropping down to NPL 1?
“At the end of the week, we’re going to get a competitive game, but throughout the week they’re in our environment, using our facilities, getting the same coaching year round, same standard in intensity. So that for me is probably more important than the competition game at the end of the week. And there’s good NPL 1 teams out there.
“As I said, we are significantly young this year, and as we had planned, regardless if we’re in NPL on NPL1, we’ll have a team that’s competitive, but it won’t be win at all costs. Some of those boys played week in week out in NPL, and have excelled, so dropping down a league I understand your question, but the focus will be having them year round in our facilities with our coaching in our environment – including possibly training with the first team.”
Joe Palatsides, Melbourne City Youth coach
What does the NPL mean to Melbourne City Youth?
“It’s going to be a lot more work. Because the [NPL1 and NYL] season is going to overlap and we’re going to have to make sure we rest our players when we want to, and play our players when they need to. So it’s going to be a juggling act but we’re looking forward to keeping our players together for the first time.
“We’ve been battling this for a long, long time. Even last year, we had to keep six or seven youth players back from going their NPL clubs and they trained with the senior squad for the last two months of the season but they didn’t get any game time. All they did was train. Now that we’ve got the NPL squad they’ll be playing games, training, training with the seniors, so it’s good for the club as a whole so we’re really happy to be in NPL.
How was the squad built?
“In the NPL [last season] we saw a lot of players, the NPL 1 not as many, but now this’ll give us the opportunity to scout both divisions better. There’s been a lot of involvement in our NPL squad during recent weeks and we will finalise them soon. All these boys are also being groomed for the NPL, and we’re bringing in younger boys for the under 20’s. We’re putting a lot of effort in the NYL team, but the NPL squad we’ll also hope to have up and running very soon. There’s only a couple of spots left in the seniors, and the under 20’s is about three quarters full, but we’re very close to determining our squad.
“We’ll keep about 95% of our current squad. The only question is around the 1994 borns (20/21 year olds in 2015) but that’s also up to John van ’t Schip and the football department to decide. But we will keep a few because the senior season runs a few months after the youth finish and we want to have those able bodies.”
How important is winning at youth level and earning promotion from NPL 1?
“It [promotion] won’t be the most important. The most important for us is keeping the boys together. We’ve been fighting for that for over three years now. That way we can manage them, train them the way we want to, rest them the way we want to, just develop them slowly in the areas we want them to get better at. So the results won’t be important, but we want to build a good culture at this club, and ultimately that surrounds winning.
“So that’s why important we win games like today (in NYL) where we don’t say “it doesn’t matter, it’s only a youth game”. It does matter, we want to teach them how to win, because John van’t Schip may need one of these boys next week, and they need to know how to win. That will flow on from the NPL squad to the NYL squad and into the senior squad, and I think that’s how we build a successful squad.”
How will the former NPL players within the squad feel about dropping down to NPL 1?
“All the boys returned their forms and they all want to be part of Melbourne City and I think they’re not the only ones who want to be part of Melbourne City.