BARRY, the small seaside resort on the south coast of Wales, is better known for being the location of the popular BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey than for their football team these days.
Barry Town United are a semi-professional outfit and got average attendances of less than 500 at their Jenner Park ground in the 2021/22 campaign as they were relegated from the Cymru Premier.
What’s occurring? You’re being demoted to the regional Cymru South league. It was no laughing matter for the seven-time champions’ small but devoted fanbase.
The Linnets, as they are known locally, are about as far removed from Rangers, who reached the Europa League final last season, as it is possible to get in the modern game.
The success of the Vale of Glamorgan minnows’ academy in the last few years, though, augurs well for the Glasgow giants going forward.
Dr Ceri Bowley, who was appointed as a first team coach at Ibrox on Thursday, returned to Barry Town United, where he had once played as a centre half as a young man, to oversee their youth set-up back in 2017.
His work there won him a move to the City Football Group – the United Arab Emirates-controlled company which owns, among many other clubs, Manchester City - as their head of coaching support two years later.
But his former employers are still reaping the rewards of the structure he put in place, the staff he brought in and the values which he instilled to this day.
Can Bowley - who Rangers director of football Ross Wilson has revealed will help to develop a “football methodology”, a task he was charged with in his last role, in the coming months – make a similar long-lasting impact in Scotland?
He has his work cut out doing so. It has proved difficult for the most talented kids who are emerging at Auchenhowie to force their way into the first team and feature on a regular basis under both Steven Gerrard and Giovanni van Bronckhorst in the past few seasons.
It is, too, becoming increasingly hard for the Govan outfit to compete in the transfer market and bring in decent players at an affordable price given the huge budgets which their rivals in larger footballing nations have at their disposal.
But David Cole, the long-serving Barry Town United secretary who has known the sports performance, psychology and strategy Svengali “for donkey’s years”, has no doubts he can after seeing him rise to the considerable challenge he faced at Jenner Park.
“Rangers have got a good guy,” he said. “Ceri came back here to take over as the head of the fairly newish academy we had set up five years ago. It was the start of his journey on the coaching side. His title was head of youth. He was in charge of the academy, from under-8 to under-19 level.
“He oversaw the recruitment and development of young players and was involved in the appointment of coaches. He made sure they had the necessary qualifications and maintained them while they were here.
“The philosophy of the academy was part of his remit. As a new academy, we didn’t have a philosophy. The academy was something we had to start in order to get into the Cymru Premier at that time.
“He was instrumental in setting up the academy, developing the philosophy, determining how it was managed, everything to do with it really. He had sole control. Ceri was the right guy at the right time. We are seeing the benefits now of what Ceri put in place years ago.”
Cole continued: “At the level we play at, we are very much third in the queue when it comes to youngsters. All the best players here are picked up by your Manchester Uniteds, Liverpools and Arsenals at a very young age and go off to their academies in England. The second tier go off Cardiff City, Swansea City, Newport County and Wrexham. We get what is left.
“We have two objectives for our academy. One, to make the kids better players so they may go off to Cardiff City or Swansea City. We have since had a few who have done that.
“The other aim is to take kids all the way through from under-8 level to the first team. We have not been going for long, but we have now managed to get three players out of our development team, our under-19 team, into our first team squad.”
Bowley was unknown to the majority of Rangers fans when it was announced that he had joined Dave Vos, Roy Makaay and Colin Stewart on Van Bronckhorst’s backroom team earlier this week – but Cole can understand the logic behind the appointment of his friend and countryman.
“I think it is a very good move by Rangers,” he said. “Ceri is an extremely, extremely intelligent man. He has got a doctorate from his time at university. He is very approachable as well. He is a really nice guy. But he also has a bit of mean streak. You need that to get on in life and in football in particular and he has it.
“He has got the experience of bringing youth players through into the first team and developing kids who are picked up by bigger clubs. I think he will be able to help Rangers do both. He knows what is required to bring players through.
“It is very hard here at Barry Town to do it because we are getting the third best academy boys and we have to mould them into the first team players of the future. It is a very difficult job. But Ceri managed to do it with several players. That proves he is very good at it.
“I would guess that at Rangers he is going to have a far higher quality of player. So he is probably going to find it easier there.
“As a lifelong follower of Rangers myself, I am personally delighted. I have never actually seen them play in the flesh. I have sent Ceri my congratulations on his appointment and am looking forward to coming up to see him.”
Bowley has been further afield than his old colleague in the past few years and Cole predicted the extensive contacts which their new first team coach has made across the globe during his time with the City Football Group will be invaluable to Rangers in future.
“He was in charge of their worldwide operation,” he said. “They have clubs in Australia, Italy, Japan, India, China, Belgium and the United States. They have their tentacles all over the globe. He was involved in all of that. I am sure that will be beneficial to Rangers. They have got a good guy.”
