HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF – PART FIVE

In the Morecambe programme, I closed by asking the question, why did the YDA cease to exist ten years after it was created. Well, the two reasons that immediately spring to mind are complacency and apathy.

Although the Youth Development Association was formed in August 1971, it didn’t receive regular exposure in the matchday programme until the 1974-75 season (see left - the YDA page from 3rd September 1977 featuring Tony Ford). This seems bizarre, given that the club’s Chairman had commented more than once about the YDA giving the club “such valuable assistance in accommodating young players”.

By the end of 1972 the YDA, which was the brainchild of Ted Blackmore who became its chairman, was earning £100 a month from its “£1-a-month” club, which offset the costs of paying for two apprentice professionals. So why the lack of publicity in the programme until 1974?

Complacency must have played a large part. The launch of the YDA coincided with the appointment of Lawrie McMenemy as manager. All of a sudden the cash-strapped club was on a high, with gates regularly topping the 10,000 mark and reaching a high of nearly 22,500 by the last game of the season. The Division Four championship title was followed by a creditable 9^th in Division Three the next season and it must have seemed like the crisis was over and that fundraising organisations like the YDA were a luxury rather than an essential.

But by the 1973-74 season, the Messiah was gone and there was the ex-Scunthorpe United manager in his place. McMenemy would have been a hard act for anyone to follow, so appointing the 1973 equivalent of Mad Nige from down the road was always asking for trouble. Ron Ashman lasted a season and a half and it was during this period that the YDA announced that it was taking a page in the programme to “show the first team spectators, the promising young footballers who play for the Youth Team of GTFC”, and highlighted the fact that the likes of Bob Cumming, Mike Czuczman, Jim Lumby, Keith Brown, Alan Marley and Martin Young had all come through the ranks of the club’s Youth Development Scheme since it had been formed.

The fact that the YDA felt the need to enlighten first team spectators would suggest that, whilst it had already been raising significant funds for the youth set-up for three years, its work was still not capturing the GTFC supporting public’s imagination as it should have been.

The trouble with long-term fundraising is that it just isn’t sexy and you’ll often find that people are happier to give £100 as a one-off donation to a cause celebre like the Ivano Bonetti Fund than they are to give £5 a year for twenty years. They get fed up with you asking them to give their cash over and over again and even the people you’re raising the money for can become apathetic and/or complacent about what you’re doing.

So it was with the YDA. The committee no doubt worked its backside off, running its £1-a-month club, holding draws, arranging events, but as the club’s fortunes improved, ironically thanks in large part to products of the youth system like Kevin Drinkell, the Moore brothers, Tony Ford and Terry Donovan, programme coverage of YDA matters was reduced to occasional announcements and presumably the majority of the supporters were beguiled by a double promotion and the dizzy heights of Division Two and no longer felt the need to raise funds.

In October 1982, the YDA announced that its money raising efforts had ceased and so endeth part one of the YDA story.