[spireitematt]

That's not an easy journey. Cant actually remember if he played any games for us. Name rings a bell and thats it TBH.
I think we all (well at least me) forget that footballers lead a pretty normal life outside of the game with all the trials and tribulations life throws at you.
Sounds like he deserves better but if he's happy and enjoying playing again then that's good.

A friend of mines son had gone through the Sheff Weds academy and had the misfortune of playing in the same position as the son of a famous ex Weds and England player. My friends son was a much better player but the other lads dad knew the ropes to pull. Come the end of the season my friends son was released whilst his mate was given a 2 year deal by Weds.
Friends son was heartbroken as Weds were his team but he ended up signing for Chesterfield then broke his leg pre season. He never fully recovered and now works for his dads business. He's never kicked a football since. Football can be a cruel place at times.

I assume that is young Mr Hirst you are talking about??  And where did he end up as well??  He was touted as the next...…..well the next David Hirst, dad pushed and pushed, alienated himself from the club, pushed for a move for George to the PL that never materialized and now George Hirst plies his trade in the French 2nd Division where I believe so far he only has a couple of goals in a full season!!!  If your friends lad was as good as you say I wish we had kept him and developed his talent rather than wishing we had Hirst MkII.

Plays in the Belgium 2nd Division and the manager of that team is Nigel Pearson. It's not what you know its who you know. There is a lot of cliques in sport even in amateur teams and clubs.

[St Charles Owl]

That's not an easy journey. Cant actually remember if he played any games for us. Name rings a bell and thats it TBH.
I think we all (well at least me) forget that footballers lead a pretty normal life outside of the game with all the trials and tribulations life throws at you.
Sounds like he deserves better but if he's happy and enjoying playing again then that's good.

A friend of mines son had gone through the Sheff Weds academy and had the misfortune of playing in the same position as the son of a famous ex Weds and England player. My friends son was a much better player but the other lads dad knew the ropes to pull. Come the end of the season my friends son was released whilst his mate was given a 2 year deal by Weds.
Friends son was heartbroken as Weds were his team but he ended up signing for Chesterfield then broke his leg pre season. He never fully recovered and now works for his dads business. He's never kicked a football since. Football can be a cruel place at times.

I assume that is young Mr Hirst you are talking about??  And where did he end up as well??  He was touted as the next...…..well the next David Hirst, dad pushed and pushed, alienated himself from the club, pushed for a move for George to the PL that never materialized and now George Hirst plies his trade in the French 2nd Division where I believe so far he only has a couple of goals in a full season!!!  If your friends lad was as good as you say I wish we had kept him and developed his talent rather than wishing we had Hirst MkII.

Plays in the Belgium 2nd Division and the manager of that team is Nigel Pearson. It's not what you know its who you know. There is a lot of cliques in sport even in amateur teams and clubs.

You are right with it being a Belgian club not French, probably even lower standard!! Pearson is no longer manager though.

[Devongone]

Oud-Heverlee Leuven do play in the Belgian Second Tier. However, finishing fifth in it suggests they'd at least give the Owls a tight game. Their owners are the King Power Group after all!

David Hirst must have massive influence if connections gained the 40 age group caps George won with England from U-17 to U20. He scored 17 goals in those games. YET the Owls gave him only one first team game. Are they suffering from Chelsea syndrome?

Last season he played 22 times for OH Leuven but only netted three times. Nevertheless England selected him in the squad for the 2019 Toulon tournament.

One of Wednesday's great problems is that since their fall from grace they have not developed an efficient development strategy to identify and bring through the host of talent available in a strong football area, which should be a goldmine. If you haven't got big money you have to have other strategies. Like Chesterfield they've been pretty clueless and continue to lack a strategy which will return a great club to the level at which it SHOULD be playing.

When George Hirst was 17 and the best centre forward of his age in England apparently I suggested Wednesday should loan him to Chesterfield. Kevin Davies for us at 16 played in Division One and had to be double man-marked. Instead Wednesday created a player who eventually had to leave the country with obscurity running neck and neck with success in his future. Little wonder the players, justly or unjustly behind him in the pecking order, ended up disillusioned and out of the game.

Jack Waddle is a good comparison, because whatever his level of talent he followed the Chesterfield development route which takes players to Sheffield FC and Matlock and they end up up scattered around Step 5-ish of non-league football ..... which is very much the level we've trained them to become. It is almost an accident when a Darikwa or a Bowery succeeds despite the system and makes a pro-career. What will we do to Levi Amantchi and Joe Rowley this season?

The lesson of David Hirst and Chris Waddle is that despite their influence and their sons' being steeped in football throughout their lives, knowing all the right things to say and do and how the games works .......... they struggled. Yet Belgium, where young Hirst went, from a much smaller pool of potential players can parade a full squad of players whose signatures the world's richest and most successful clubs would covet.

If having a dad who knows the system intimately doesn't do it for you there's likely something wrong with the system.

[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.

[Dancingwilldoit]

Oud-Heverlee Leuven do play in the Belgian Second Tier. However, finishing fifth in it suggests they'd at least give the Owls a tight game. Their owners are the King Power Group after all!

David Hirst must have massive influence if connections gained the 40 age group caps George won with England from U-17 to U20. He scored 17 goals in those games. YET the Owls gave him only one first team game. Are they suffering from Chelsea syndrome?

Last season he played 22 times for OH Leuven but only netted three times. Nevertheless England selected him in the squad for the 2019 Toulon tournament.

One of Wednesday's great problems is that since their fall from grace they have not developed an efficient development strategy to identify and bring through the host of talent available in a strong football area, which should be a goldmine. If you haven't got big money you have to have other strategies. Like Chesterfield they've been pretty clueless and continue to lack a strategy which will return a great club to the level at which it SHOULD be playing.

When George Hirst was 17 and the best centre forward of his age in England apparently I suggested Wednesday should loan him to Chesterfield. Kevin Davies for us at 16 played in Division One and had to be double man-marked. Instead Wednesday created a player who eventually had to leave the country with obscurity running neck and neck with success in his future. Little wonder the players, justly or unjustly behind him in the pecking order, ended up disillusioned and out of the game.

Jack Waddle is a good comparison, because whatever his level of talent he followed the Chesterfield development route which takes players to Sheffield FC and Matlock and they end up up scattered around Step 5-ish of non-league football ..... which is very much the level we've trained them to become. It is almost an accident when a Darikwa or a Bowery succeeds despite the system and makes a pro-career. What will we do to Levi Amantchi and Joe Rowley this season?

The lesson of David Hirst and Chris Waddle is that despite their influence and their sons' being steeped in football throughout their lives, knowing all the right things to say and do and how the games works .......... they struggled. Yet Belgium, where young Hirst went, from a much smaller pool of potential players can parade a full squad of players whose signatures the world's richest and most successful clubs would covet.

If having a dad who knows the system intimately doesn't do it for you there's likely something wrong with the system.

Or theres something wrong with the Dad

[Devongone]

Maybe it's me but can't negotiate with a 17 year-old reminds me of Jeremy Hunt who thinks he could negotiate with the EU when most of the time he either failed to negotiate or didn't even turn up to talk to doctors ( the nicest group you're likely to get across a table!)

David Hirst could always put a few backs up when he was the best centre forward in the country ..... King Power owns George so if he becomes good enough for Leicester they'll get him. That's where Wednesday got themselves to in this convoluted story. Even a dad with stars and pound signs in his eyes would've been likely to be swayed by a promise of regular first team involvement for a 17 year-old. There are examples all over Europe of players of that age playing in Second and Third Tiers and sometimes even First with smaller clubs who are grabbing the attention of Barcas, Bayerns and Reals. The big clubs have loads of their own academy products - someone from a bit different background with actual game time behind them can attract big interest and big money. If you can't sell your own advantages to an ex-player's son, what kind of picture are you painting on a day-to-day basis?

This having his head turned business is so Sunday-League. "Course he went to play for them, they got showers and a clubhouse!"

I'm sure David Hirst has been at fault and he may almost have wrecked his son's career. Of course Chris Waddle got Jack into Chesterfield ...... but we made him Captain of our Junior Team, we gave him a contract and all we created was a modest non-league player. WE did that! And Wednesday weren't clever enough to change the course the Hirsts were on ...... Not only have the Blunts gone up, but in the production and development of players Wednesday are trailing in Leeds' wake. An' they're fishing in the same pond and trying to succeed in the same market. Take an example like Che Adams. He was at Ilkeston, people knew about him and I was moaning that Chesterfield weren't leaping in to grab him. His reputation grew. United got him ..... where were Wednesday? If I was disappointed in Chesterfield's failure to investigate their own doorstep, how would I have felt as an Owl's fan?

When young players have their heads turned it doesn't mean that they are necessarily disloyal or money-grabbing it is that they are seeing something better elsewhere, better coaching, better preparation etc.

Avaricious and misguided parents like awkward teenage footballers are just part of the data. If you can't deal with that, it isn't that the problem is insoluble it's that you weren't creative or devious enough to solve it. Leicester have got George Hirst, even if he is signed for a team few have heard of in Belgium's second tier.

[Devongone]

I just thought I'd add the reason it matters is Leeds are about to collect £10 million plus for a teenage winger and Hirst's predecessor with England - Solanke went to Bournemouth for reported £19 million on the basis of age group caps and goals and 7 in the Erevidse.

How often will Sheffield Wednesday ever have the best centre forward of his age in the country - probably never again. That's why blaming David Hirst or smirking that his son is playing the Belgian second tier miss the mark. Imagine if he smacked in 20 this season for Leuven it would take more than Bournemouth's £19 million to get his signature.

[St Charles Owl]

I just thought I'd add the reason it matters is Leeds are about to collect £10 million plus for a teenage winger and Hirst's predecessor with England - Solanke went to Bournemouth for reported £19 million on the basis of age group caps and goals and 7 in the Erevidse.

How often will Sheffield Wednesday ever have the best centre forward of his age in the country - probably never again. That's why blaming David Hirst or smirking that his son is playing the Belgian second tier miss the mark. Imagine if he smacked in 20 this season for Leuven it would take more than Bournemouth's £19 million to get his signature.

I am not for one minute suggesting that the club were blameless in this whole saga. It went on for months, was a topic at numerous fan forums and a lot of fans were very disgruntled with the club over the whole thing. Getting creative would have been great with George but as soon as he refused to sign a contract the clubs hands were tied, we couldn’t sell him and we couldn’t stop him from leaving. The damage was obviously done well before it got to the point of him leaving us.

[Devongone]

I'm sure you're right. If perhaps you'd outlined a special plan early on for him to become a first teamer in a promotion chasing Wednesday at say 18 he'd have seen ambition and a future to match whatever colleagues in England U-17 were offered. If that had involved a plan for a loan to Div 1 or 2 for game time at 17 he would have seen a pathway and big money on his horizon.

Trouble is age-group caps put you alongside youngsters from top Premier clubs and they are bound to say, "you ought to be playing for us ……." You needed to have his future mapped out before those potential influences could distract him. There are big advantages to being the best player at Wednesday and getting Championship game time over struggling to keep making the cut at Chelsea or Man City.

[Devongone]

Just thought I'd mention Tendayi Darikwa has played in both games so far for Zimbabwe in the African Nations. Unfortunately they lost 1-0 to Egypt and only got a 1-1 draw with Uganda despite being on top.

Bevis Mugabi is in Uganda's side - I reckon he was released by Yeovil .......... any body out there want a free agent international?