Big goals for little Kiwis
The professionalisation of junior sport has spawned an entire industry. Who is benefiting? National correspondent Dana Johannsen reports.
They arrive in waves.
Every 75 minutes a new flock of youngsters appears, dressed in identical black training kit to learn an identical brand of football – referred to with almost evangelical fervour as ‘‘The Ole Way’’.
With each new wave, the kids get older, faster, more fleet-footed and aggressive. Come nightfall, under the cool glow of the floodlights that illuminate the mist in the air, the senior players are fanned out around the field, executing the same drills with robotic-like precision. It is like witnessing the 10-year progression of a football player in the space of four hours.
Housed among the modest surrounds of Porirua’s Kenepuru Community Hospital, the Ole Football Academy is considered the benchmark for football development in New Zealand.
It’s the brainchild of former All Whites manager Dave Wilson, who established the academy in 1997. After some quiet years, the programme was reinvigorated seven years ago with the arrival of Declan Edge, who implemented a radical new philosophy.
He wanted to create technically adept and mentally tough players capable of adapting to the top professional leagues around the world. Scores don’t matter. The coaches at Ole have no interest in winning titles. Rather, the focus is on the long-term development of each player.
From the age of nine, players are indoctrinated into the Ole game style. They’re encouraged to ‘‘go big’’, to spread wide and to play for possession.
‘‘You won’t see kids this age [10-11] playing like this at other clubs,’’ says Blake Jones, the academy’s baby-faced chief executive, as the youngest group of players are put through their paces in a training match.
As the players get older, the jargon used remains the same (‘‘we try to create a common language used throughout the club,’’ says Jones), but the training demands get greater and the programme more sophisticated. The players have a sprint and power trainer, a mobility specialist and a nutritionist, and receive detailed video analysis.
Ole, which last year opened a second facility in Auckland, is one of an ever-increasing number of football academies that have usurped the Federation Talent Centres as the number one development pathway for the country’s top players. More than 30 Ole alumni are signed to professional contracts or are playing at colleges in the US, with the honour roll including All White Ryan Thomas, who plays for Dutch premier league giants PSV Eindhoven, Dan Keat and Craig Henderson, and top young Football Ferns prospect Maya Hahn.
Despite its success, Ole has plenty of detractors as well. Critics argue the programme is too intense and places too great a workload on the young players, while the rigid playing style can make it difficult for players to adjust to new team environments.
Others are concerned the academy’s messaging is dangerous and misleading. Every player selected is told when they pass through the doors that if they work hard they will be a professional footballer. It’s the Ole guarantee.
Leaving to one side the veracity of that claim, conventional wisdom suggests that placing such hefty expectations on kids can be damaging to their mental health.
But Jones believes that professionalism is a perfectly reasonable goal for all the talented youngsters in their programme – the caveat being how you define ‘‘professional’’.
‘‘If you’re playing for a third division team in the Netherlands then you’re still a professional. You might only be earning $400 a week, but you have your food, board, and travel covered, that’s still a great lifestyle,’’ says Jones.