[St Charles Owl]

The problems with George Hirst go beyond his ability or his appearances for the club or England. Wednesday recognized the potential he had as a 16/17 year old, that's when he made his one and only appearance. It was his reluctance to sign a new contract that started the problems, and this was something that eventually was directly linked to the advice he was getting from his Dad. His head was turned after Leicester and other PL teams apparently were after signing him, he wouldn't sign a contract and in his last season with us this was the time he may well have broken into the first team, but due to him not signing it was decided to not play him by Carvahal. He let his contract run down and then waited for the offers to come in from the PL, which never materialized and eventually ended up in Belgium. Had he stayed in England we would have been due some compensation, but as he went abroad we didn't get that, the cynical side of me looks at their ownership group and see this as Leicester not wanting to pay 500k or so to us!!

The club severed all ties with David Hirst during this period due to the way he was conducting himself and even though the contract offer we made was the highest we had ever offered to an academy player, the potential lure of the PL and the wages he could likely earn left a sour taste with a lot of our fans and the club. He also turned down multiple loan opportunities that we wanted him to pursue to continue his development, this at a time that we were up in the top 6 of the Championship. Had he signed the contract and taken the loans he would likely be our main forward now, but he was consistently advised against both. We are certainly not blessed with a raft of young stars but have over the last couple of years played about 6-8 of the same academy group that George was in on a regular basis and he would have been one of them, the club are not angels in this but the advice he was given wasn't that good either.