Hartley and Alloa coming of age under guidance of an old hand

Chris Tait
Saturday 18 May 2013

THE Irn-Bru First Division seemed miles away for Graeme Liveston on Thursday.

His club had taken a large step towards a place in that league following a 3-0 victory in the first leg their a play-off final with Dunfermline Athletic the night before, but Alloa Athletic's head of youth development was on an arranged trip to Plymouth. It is a lengthy journey but one on which all he expected to lose was a decent night's kip and a few hours of phone signal. "It's some way but I've been down this road before," he said.

It is a fitting sentiment for an established figure in youth coaching, since his job is always a work in progress; hours spent burnishing the talents of a few bright, young things rewarded intermittently by the sight of a handful who have gone on to shine for the first team. Having held affiliations with the scouting and youth systems at Leeds United, Celtic, Rangers and Dundee United before alighting at Recreation Park a year ago, Liveston's results have come to speak for themselves, or at the very least still see fit to phone him. His 25-year spell at Tannadice cultivated the most success as the likes of Christian Dailly, David Goodwillie and Scott Allan were nurtured.

He has added to that list at Alloa this season. The part-time club are expected to celebrate successive promotions tomorrow but that rise has not stymied the growth of a few aspiring talents. Lee McLelland, Michael Hardie and Scott Hynd were each given a chance to impress in the final two fixtures of the regular term, the latter scoring a last-minute goal in a 1-0 victory over Arbroath.

"He has got something special," said Liveston. "A young striker has maybe got more of a chance of progressing quickly than a young defender or even a midfielder, because a manager will give a younger striker a chance early. You've really got nothing to lose and it came up trumps against Arbroath."

That the 15-year-old was sheltered from the rigours of a play-off was not all that surprising, though. Liveston appreciates that the first team sets the tone – "the whole place is buzzing at the moment" – and that his own work is conducted at a different pitch, such as the one in France on to which he will send an under-17 side to compete in the 10-team Festival D'Armour next week. It is a tournament Liveston won in 2003, when a United team including Garry Kenneth and David Robertson defeated Espanyol 5-4 on penalties, and that the likes of Malaga and Standard Liege are to attend this year.

Alloa might be expected to stick out in such company, while the second division club also seem a modest addition to Liveston's cv. Yet he needed only one conversation with Paul Hartley to convince him to join the Alloa manager's staff. "I knew him from way back and it was his enthusiasm that did it for me," said Liveston, whose work is aided by the availability of the club's artificial pitch. "He said 'I want young players in my squad, do you think it's possible?' I believed it was possible as there are always players out there.

"I think one of the mistakes people make is thinking that if players are not identified by 12 or 13, then they are not worth looking at. I never thought that was the case. You can find players at 15, 16 who are hungry. It's just a matter of identifying them. Funnily enough, I was speaking to Scott Allan and he was in the system at Dundee United from the age of 10; now, that is very, very unusual, but he made it all the way through. Then there are guys like Goodwillie, who signed at 15. At the moment, the academy system means that it is hard for these slightly older players to break in."

Liveston has spent much of his career peering into the cracks down which those jilted youths might have fallen and he has not been discouraged despite the odd talent failing to come to light. Alloa's youth system – from which Raith Rovers' Greig Spence and midfielder Jamie Stevenson, who would move to Real Mallorca, have also sprouted – was brought into focus earlier this season amid rumours that Arsenal were looking at 17-year-old Noel Makombo-Eboma, a French prodigy whose career path had veered from Sochaux to Clackmannanshire. He had arrived with bags of talent but also a €270,000 price tag should he sign a contract and is expected to depart before the summer is over.

For those who remain, though, a tilt at the first division apparently awaits.

Taken from the Herald