Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Foxton View Post
That's correct-Sion Spence was offered a 1 year deal, along with Sam Bowen. This was when Neil Harris was in charge, and he basically said to Sion, I wont be using any youth players in the first team. Sion decided to try his luck elsewhere, and Sam Bowen stayed. When Bellamy was still there, towards the end of Warnock's reign, he was constantly pushing for both to be given the opportunity in the first team, he felt they were ready. Warnock wasn't interested and batted him away with, "put them in the U23's". I don't think Bellamy was a fan of U23 football at the time, so kept them with him in the U18's. I suppose its a sliding doors moment, and Sion might have been wise to stick around, but he was desperate for first team football.
For all McCarthy did wrong, he massively improved the pathway into the first team for youngsters, although that did start under Harris as well, as I'm sure Mark Harris and Joel Bagan were already getting game time.

Warnock was never likely to be the guy to bring through a youngster unless he was absolutely sure he could rely on them. Skipping u23 football and trying to go straight from u18s to the first team was never going to happen, possibly a bit of naivety from Bellamy, or perhaps he wanted to keep them in the u18s so he got more of the credit for their eventual emergence, rather than letting the u23s coaches get the credit.