IT'S A MARINATED WORLD: The Future's so bright we got to wear shades

All the great managers of the teams I like, have advocated a outstanding Youth Policy with some outstanding results

Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, Rene Trost and Graham Arnold are advocates of "giving the kids a break" .....their faith in youth teams have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt with the respective success's of their teams.

The two greatest managers of Manchester United brought through a amazing amount of young guys...

Sir Matt (and his scouts) found and nurtured, among others, Duncan Edwards, Sir Bobby Charlton, Georgie Best, David Pegg and Roger Byrne...sadly, the club lost a fair amount of the "Busby Babes" in the Munich Air Disaster , but the team kicked on under Busby and went on to give Europe a shake up..... As for Sir Alex, well, it could be argued that he has done much better than Busby in his youth policy, if you go on success alone, then yes he has...David Beckham, Paul Scholes. Ryan Giggs, Phil & Gary Neville to name a few...hell, he got the treble with these boys...no slouch them.

And then from the dutch side of my listed preference's, may I present, Rene Trost, the man in charge of the youth filled , top of the Dutch Eerste Divisie..the mighty Maastricht Vootball Vlagen...MVV, Rene has taken the previous managers concept of giving the youth an occasional chance and then selling them, and instead giving them a real good go and watching them florish...average age of the first team..between 19 and 22....awesome stuff indeed.

And then there is the Mighty Mighty Mariner's....who without a shade of a doubt, have the most successful youth program in the A-League, although if you listen to blithering idiots from other clubs, they thought of it first and the Coast are mere copy cats...only problem with that is, its documented that we got the idea first...so the rest of the comp can go re-think their stupid comments , they wont of course.

To say the Mariners have had success with young guys is a understatement...lets look at a list of young guys from the Mariners who have kicked on...Alex Wilkinson, Matty Simon, Mustafa Amini, Mile Jedinak...all playing at good sized clubs(or at least have done), then there is the guys that have gone to other A-League clubs...including Sammy Gallagher and Nigel Boogard just to name a couple...and I must give a shout out to Brad Porter..retired now ( at his mid 20's), but he had his moments in the yellow, that's for sure.

The Mariners youth squad for the past few years has been on fire and supplying the first team with a steady stream of youngsters, yes, some haven't quite got it and either have or need to go back down...BUT...we won the comp last year and look to be on target for doing it again this year, THAT'S THE BOYS JINXED THEN....

The managers of the young-un's have been just brilliant...Tony Walmsley, formerly of Man United and this year John McClafferty have got the young guns blazing a path of greatness right through the other squads...Tony done such a good job, that half of the team ended up at HAL newbies Western Sydney Wanderers....

This year Macca has the boys zooming again...speaking of brilliant managers of youth players...lets not forget our goal keeping maestro extroidanaire...the one and only J.C Jon Crawley...the ,man has pumped out so many great keepers it aint even amusing...Danny Vukovic, Matty Ryan, Andrew Redmayne and I dare say his had some time with the current youth stopper David Bradosevic....

A few of the guys who have got my attention this year are Brent Griffiths, Mitchell Duke, Louie Bozanic..yep, Olly's brother, Bernie Ibini, Trent Sainsbury and Tommy Rogic with an honorable mention to Zac Anderson who we picked up from the defunct Gold Coast team ...all guns, and the guys who will keep the Mariners strong for a few years to come.