City building good relationships

The Scottish man feels that international recognition both sides of the border is also something, which has improved in recent times and in fairness the likes of Michael Duffy, Raymond Foy and Barry McNamee are just three of the recent group of players who have come through the Brandywell system.

“Over the last three years, we have had around 16 players capped at various levels, whether it was school boys internationals, B Internationals or Under 21 internationals for both North and South,” stated Seydak.

“We have built up a really good relationship with both the IFA (Irish Football Association) and the FAI (Football Association of Ireland) at international youth level and the coaches around the country also take an interest on what we are doing.

“And because of that any young lads who come to the club they know they have a great opportunity of getting recognised by both sets of youth international coaches and managers.

“Stephen Robinson (Northern Ireland U21 manager) and Tom Mohan (Republic of Ireland U17 manager) both have made a real effort to come and look at the lads and the players are getting a chance and that’s due to the relationship we have built up over the years.”

The former Limavady United gaffer believes in years to come a few young players in their current squad maybe strutting their stuff at international level in the not too distant future.

“At the minute we have quite a few players who are doing well the likes of George Kelly, Brian Doherty, Josh Tracey, Paddy Slevin, Adrian Doherty and Luke McCloskey, but to be honest there are several others in and around the various squads who are doing well.

“We recently went down with a very young U19 team to the Galway Cup and we were unlucky to lose to Cork City on penalties; Cork have won that competition the last two years, so we were pleased with how that went.

“Everything seems to be going quite well from a youth point of view at the minute, but we are not sitting on our laurels, we know there is still a lot of work to do and we are always looking for players, but we do feel that it’s good for the young players to get recognised.”

Seydak was full of praise to both the Derry & District Youth and Senior League’s, with Liam Smyth and former City manager Jimbo Crossan also getting a special mention.

“As I said we are also looking for players and what we find is most teams in Derry at youth level who feel they have a player who they think is good, they’ll contact us and we’ll bring the player in and have a look at him.

“Most of the clubs are very supportive of what we are doing and they’ll send their best player down to us.

“In fact in the last group of players the likes of Michael Duffy and Caoimhin Bonner had offers to go to England and they weren’t regulars in Derry’s first-team. Young Caoimhin took his offer and went to Kilmarnock and both Mickey Duffy and Josh Tracey turned down offers to stay with Derry, so that’s good.

“As well as the local D&D Youth League, I would like to thank the D&D Senior League and in particular Liam Smyth and Jimbo Crossan, as they allow us to play in their league and it gives boys the chance to play at a higher level than Youth Team football, which in the long term benefits them to move into senior football.”

Another man who supporters probably don’t know but behind the scenes does a fantastic job is fitness coach Pearse Lafferty.

“The young boys when they come into the club at 15-years-old, we hand them over twice a week for strength and conditioning programme to Pearse Lafferty, who did his masters in sports physiology at Manchester City and he has proved to be a great bonus for all the players, who have and are continuing to come through the ranks at Derry City.”

Derry supporters are reminded that tomorrow (Wednesday) night the Reserves face Fanad United in the Ulster Senior League, at the Showgrounds (KO 7pm) and the Under 19 League doesn’t get under way until early September.