Town’s U15s beat their Northern Ireland counterparts 2-0 in a game jointly sponsored by TWTD and Suffolk New College at Playford Road on Sunday morning with Andre Dozzell and Max Melanson scoring a goal in either half. Academy recruitment officer Steve McGavin, who arranged the match in order to take a look at the province’s best youngsters, spoke to TWTD about the match and the job he took on at the start of the season.

McGavin took over from the long-serving Moore when he retired last summer and says it’s been a busy but enjoyable year so far. The priority was lining up Smith and next season’s other first-year full-timers: “We’ve managed to get a group which we think are of the right quality, which is obviously the most important thing.

“We’re excited about some of the players coming through in that age group and we’ve got quite a diverse group. We’ve got Smith from Northern Ireland, a player from the Republic of Ireland, a lad coming from New Zealand.

“We’ve got quite a good mix of local boys. We’ve got two goalkeepers, right-back Josh Emmanuel from Colchester, Matthew Clarke, who can play centre-half or in midfield. He’s an Ipswich boy, he’s doing very well, playing in the U21s.

“The most important thing is the quality because for the coaches here. The one thing that they really want is players of the right quality with the endgame obviously for them to play in the first team.

“We know they’re not all going to go and play in the first team but initially we need the players of the right quality.

“In an ideal world we’d like to fill all those scholarships with local boys but the reality is that that’s not going to be the case every year.

“Some years there’ll be more than others and obviously it’s more cost-effective for us to fill the scholarships with local players, so that will always be our priority.”

The former Colchester, Wycombe and Birmingham striker says a lot of work goes into finding the best local talent: “We have a network of scouts who are covering games all over Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, most of East Anglia.

“Monday to Friday there’s quite a lot of paperwork and organisation which goes with the job and at the weekends as much as possible I try to get out and watch games because ultimately that’s what I’m here to do.

“There’s a little bit of international travel, Ireland, Scotland, and if I wanted to I could be away every weekend, there’s the opportunity for to go all over Europe and watch games, but there’s got to be a balance between what our priorities are.

“For example, before Michael Crowe came, we were desperate for a keeper, so if we get into a situation like that then your priority is to go and get a keeper.

“Then all of a sudden your normal week-to-week stuff changes. This year I’ve watched quite a lot of the U16 games because we’ve had a lot of trialists in and a lot of people we’ve been looking to recruit in that age group.

“I’ve probably spent a lot of time watching them on Saturdays watching them, more than I probably would have done otherwise. But we’re getting into a situation now where we’re comfortable with the scholars we’ve got.

He says recruitment begins very early on these days: “We’ve really tried to get it right in the younger age groups, even down to the sevens and eights and even six-year-olds now.

“Some people would question whether we need to be looking at six-year-olds, but unfortunately that’s the nature of the beast because clubs are just recruiting boys at a younger and younger age.

“It’s about getting contact time with them at that age so that when they come to register with a team you hope that you’ve created an impression where they feel as if this club is the right environment.”

He says he welcomes player recommendations from the public, although warns that the standard required is often underestimated and that the best players are usually already on the radar: “People can email in to the academy. I would check out a player. I’m not being funny but it would be very rare that a boy playing in a B team or anything like that would be of the right level.

“It has a way of filtering itself. The best players you tend to find play for good clubs or play for their county sides or representative sides.

“There’ll be the odd one who might be playing for his village side or something like that but it does tend to filter itself. But we would always check boys out, there are always one or two that pop up that you haven’t seen.”

With Bryan Klug returning as academy director last summer, Russell Osman the U18s coach and former scholars such as Liam Manning, who was in charge of the U15s on Sunday, also on the staff, there are plenty of people at Playford Road who understand the ethos of the club.

“A lot of the staff have had contact with the club and have played for the club, which is nice because we’ve had that interaction with the club and been involved,” he says.

“We’re trying to create the successes that we’ve had previously. And with Bryan, his record speaks for itself.”

The summer of 2012 saw youth football move to the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) with the Blues becoming a Category Two set-up, although with a switch to Category One not a huge leap.

Category One clubs are able to recruit players from throughout the country, whereas Category Two are limited to those based more locally, but McGavin says this hasn’t proved a significant stumbling block: “No, not really. In terms of where we recruit from, I don’t think it would be a major difference really in terms of it being cost-effective for the club.

“Obviously being Category One you can recruit from more or less anywhere in the country, but with that comes a huge expense.

“We currently recruit locally, which will always be our priority, and what I mean by that is predominantly Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, parts of Hertfordshire and Norfolk.”

The EPPP has presented other challenges with Category One clubs able to ‘poach’ schoolboys who haven’t agreed to accept full-time scholarships for less than generous pre-set compensation fees.

Andre Dozzell, the son of ex-Blue Jason, is such an example, having recently accepted a scholarship, which will begin when he leaves school.

“Basically, there is a set formula for a boy between nine and 16 that works out the cost,” McGavin explains. “You can look at it and say ‘We know he’s been there three years, he’s this age group, it’s going to cost £X’.

“After a boy’s 14th birthday, if he signs a scholarship and he accepts it, it puts the club in a better position in terms of negotiating.

“Obviously, from our point of view, if we’ve got any players of the right quality, then we’ll put them on scholarships quite early.

“I think Ipswich is one of those clubs where a lot of bigger clubs would look and think that in most age groups we’ve got very good players.

“What we’ve got to try and do is create the right learning environment where parents and young players want to stay and play for Ipswich Town’s academy.

“I’m sure that there are players in our academy that other clubs would like to take but we just hope that we’ve got the right set-up that parents wouldn’t want to leave, that they see there’s a pathway for their son, if he’s of the right ability and the right quality and type of person, that he would go and play for our first team.”

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