Does this mean a club like Harpenden Town have a better youth set up than Southend? Not exactly big name team to lose to
The short answer is not necessarily, because this was a one-off knockout tie.
The longer answer is that, since the withdrawal of Premier League and EFL funding to operate a Category Three Academy under the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2023, the Academy as we knew it was decimated. Last season, only the U19 squad and a small number of coaches remained in place; this season has seen the Southend United Community Foundation take on the operation of the youth department, so there's a second U19 squad - also competing in the National League U19 Alliance - and the club have reinstated a Centre of Excellence to provide a pathway for local youngsters through the age groups.
What this means is, as and when the club returns to the EFL, the structure is in place to immediately reinstate a Category 3 Academy, which would mean competing against the likes of Leyton Orient, Gillingham, Northampton Town in an organised games programme from U9s through to U18s. However, building up a such a structure takes time, because the players you bring in at U9s aren't appearing for the U18s for a decade.
If you have a good recruiting strategy, you can short-cut some of that time-period (think about some of the players that arrived 15-20 years ago such as Daniel Bentley, who was at Arsenal, Elvis Bwomono, who was at QPR, Stuart O'Keefe, who was at Ipswich Town). Some of the players in the U19s squad now have been brought in from the likes of Colchester United and Gillingham.
However, what Harpenden Town, who compete at the equivalent level as the Essex Senior League, do have is a strong structure in place. They have strong links to a Colts section that contains over 100 teams and is one of the largest grassroots clubs in the country, and are close enough to Luton to pick up some decent players from the Hatters at 15/16/17 with a route into adult senior football if players drop out of Academy football at that age and don't want to more to another Academy. We fall between two stools in some ways because - although the likes of Mikey Faulkner and Beau MacDonald show there is still a pathway at our club - it is harder for a young player to break into a National League side than it is to break into an Essex Senior League or Spartan South Midlands League team, in this case.
The disappointment, for me but more importantly for the coaches and the players involved last night, was that the squad didn't perform to its potential against Harpenden Town. There are some talented players in the team, but they didn't take their opportunities and they surrendered possession too easily. As coach Danny Heath said afterwards, it felt "flat" and we didn't play to our strengths.
So, my conclusion would be that Harpenden have a really good structure in place at their club, and that's something that the Community Foundation are now attempting to rebuild at our club, but that will take time. But the players we have currently probably have a higher ceiling than the Harpenden players, as a collective, although they didn't show that last night.
