Well, sort of.
Yesterday’s revelation that Roscoe Dsane was back training with us certainly raised a few eyebrows. Not to mention a few dewey eyed moments when he wore the blue-with-yellow-trim shirt and gave some Ryman Premier defences a hard time.
That was then, of course. RDS left the club for Accrington in 2007, back when DA was still in charge, and it proves just how long a go a few short years feels. Today, he’s 30, been without a club since Torquay let him go in the summer and hasn’t played since.
Fitness wise, he needs a fair amount of work to get up to scratch again, and if you consider that a pre-season takes about 6-8 weeks to fully prepare a player, I doubt if we can expect to see him at Colliers Wood United tomorrow.
Still, it’s an interesting development. And not just for the three different ways of spelling his surname. He may be a bit older these days, but he’s still a Conference standard player, and while the Conf has improved in quality somewhat, he could still “do a job” as the expression goes. Perhaps not in the DK mould, but unlike Main you get the feeling even today he’s more of a professional footballer and able to score goals in at least two different formations.
Should he come through, his age isn’t necessarily a problem. Look at Paul Furlong for example, or (closer to home) Jamie Stuart. Nobody is complaining right now about a 34 year old marshalling our defence, in fact we all are thankful that people like Franks and Harris don’t have to work it all out themselves.
And it’s not like anyone objected to a certain Mr M Gayle or Mr J Goodliffe seeing their twilight years out with us.
No, RDS won’t be a long term solution, but then he doesn’t need to be. It’s quite fortunate that we’re in a no-lose position with him merely training with us right now. He’s unlikely to be snapped up by a promotion rival, he’s presumably not costing us much, he’s certainly not denting the transfer budget and if he gets a second chance we’ve got ourselves a goalscorer falling onto our lap (metaphorically speaking).
Time will tell whether he will sign up with us again. But at least he’s with us right now, which is more than you can say about Danny Hylton. Be honest, you weren’t surprised were you? He never wanted to leave Hampshire anyway, and since Judas Holdsworth took over the reins there his transfer looked as likely as Andy Gray and Richard Keys appearing on Loose Women.
Now the transfer window is drawing to a close, one hopes there isn’t going to be a panic buy just for the sake of it. Or even a sale – Coventry were linked with Luke Moore this week, since denied, and Delano Sam-Yorke has gone back to Basingstoke for the rest of the season. Wonder if we’ll see him ever play for us? He certainly had that element of stop-gap about him, somebody signed up to make up squad numbers.
If you want further proof of how much we’ve evolved even since the beginning of the season, I can’t imagine us signing another DS-Y type player now. Just as we’ll never go for a Belal these days either. It’s worth remembering that when we went full-time last year we did so with our eyes closed feet first. It could have gone very badly wrong.
The fact it didn’t – in fact, it went rather well – is a mixture of good fortune and good scouting. But those moaning that we’re stifling the youth after early-season promises should bear in mind we’re now on the second rung of being a pro club.
I would expect that this close season we’ll see two (or more) players of the Yakubu/Stuart level rather than just the one. Our transfer budget has clearly increased, and I expect we’ll be less reliant on youth in future. By that, I mean that while we still pick up the FF/EH/RJ players, we may not go for the Jolleys so much in future.
Indeed, maybe it will be a case of, less transfers but for more established players? Properly scouted, one hopes (and certainly no Andre Blackman mark II), and not one based on so much sentimentality. Or “one for the future” that never materialise and then end up at Dover a year later.
This week, on Twitter, Marcus Gayle was even more open than ever about needing to move the stiffs up the next level, even into the Combination. Should this happen – and christ, SW19 has whinged on about this for ages – it will mean that we can afford to be a lot more selective about who we sign in future, because we’ll be bringing up our own.
We may not see so many young players make the first team – if they ever did in the first place – but the ones that do come through will be of far higher quality. Which after all was how the famed WFC youth policy really did it.
Anyway, we’ll see tonight at Barf what happens. Don’t expect an SW19 report on it, if only because I’m doing the OS one instead. We shall see if we can finally win a game on the road, there’s certainly no excuse not to now. Certainly not if we have legitimate promotion hopes.
And if RDS doesn’t work out, I hear that Carl Cort has had his contract at Brentford cancelled….