Past-masters helping West Brom kids to excel
Their season has been abandoned due to the coronavirus pandemic – but Albion’s academy players have been kept on their toes thanks to some star-studded coaching sessions.
With the country in lockdown and all footballers forced to train at home, academy manager Richard Stevens has been working on creative and engaging programmes for his player to follow.
And with a little bit of help from coaches James Morrison and Deon Burton, he enlisted Jonny Evans, Darren Fletcher and Teddy Sheringham who all held a question and answer session with Albion’s emerging stars via video link.
Ex-Baggies duo Evans and Fletcher focused on their respective positions of midfield and central defence, while Sheringham was happy to offer some remote-learning about the role of strikers.
“The pandemic has provided challenges and I have to say at the outset the academy staff have been outstanding in responding,” Stevens said.
“We’ve had to think creatively and their buy-in from the outset and ongoing day-to-day motivation has been inspiring.
“We’ve learned so much that we will definitely be taking some of the ideas out of this crisis and adapting them for future use when the game returns.
“For the 16s to 23s, we’ve been able to stage these master-classes from the pros which were just sensational.
“We had Darren Fletcher doing a Q&A for midfield players, Jonny Evans for central defenders and Teddy Sheringham for the strikers.
“Absolute masterclasses they were and it was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done with up to 100 boys absolutely spellbound.
“I’m thankful to Mozza (James Morrison) and Deon (Burton) for helping us set up the calls.”
Stevens believes it was the right decision to call-off all academy football.
And he said it means he and his team can now work on planning an off-season for his players.
“Clearly it was the right decision to cancel the academy league programmes,” Stevens added.
“Although there were teams fighting promotion and relegation, it’s clearly not as important in the context of everyone’s health and the development of young players.
“Now we will take things down and shape some kind of off-season which will mean giving them three or four weeks away and then assess the situation in terms of when they come back in.
“That’s the thing no-one can say at the moment.
“But we can’t make the off-season so long they forget what their job is!
“It’s been great to see their interaction through the use of (video calling platform) Zoom, great to see them making each other laugh.
“Through the use of that platform we’ve been able to run sessions by the sports science coaches, the football staff and the education team.”
