"Ultimately, he is 19 years old. He has got a hell of a lot of time. But I tell you what, he will be a much better player next season. Off the back of this season, he will definitely be one to watch."
Those are the words of Steve Morison, just over 12 months ago, speaking about Cardiff City's Rubin Colwill.
No one needs telling that it has not been the season anyone would have envisaged for the young playmaker. Not least for the player himself.
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Colwill, now 20, has started just three Championship matches this season. That is the same number as Gavin Whyte and fewer than Curtis Nelson, Tom Sang, Max Watters, Connor Wickham and Jamilu Collins, who has been injured since August.
Since his debut against Coventry City in February 2021, he has been on the pitch just 25 percent of the time for Cardiff, amassing just 2,586 minutes of club football out of a possible 10,080.
Therein lies the frustration from supporters, which is completely understandable. The crucial point is, if he wasn't so obviously talented, there would be no frustration at all regarding his lack of game-time. Because everyone knows what he is capable of.
He is also a beacon of the academy products. Having the driest of dry wells for the best part of a decade, yielding the talents of Colwill, Isaak Davies, Mark Harris and Joel Bagan has been one of very, very few positives in recent seasons.
But, for many, including senior figures inside Cardiff City and Wales, Colwill is almost certainly the player with the highest ceiling and that is why it important not to lose patience with him.
In some ways, it would have been easier for Colwill to miss an entire season with something akin to a cruciate ligament injury, to put paid to his constant niggles and setbacks and allow him a full year of rehab without the 'will-he-won't-he' rigmarole that comes with these constant niggles and subsequent frustrations for fans, the team and, no doubt, the player.
But let's all take a step back and realise the kid is only 20 years of age. He skyrocketed to Wales honours a little over 12 months on from that Coventry debut and was deemed talented enough to be named in Rob Page's Euro 2020 squad.
He showed real glimpses of his talent last season with a brace against Nottingham Forest to earn a victory at the City Ground, a well-taken goal against Liverpool in the FA Cup and a certified banger of a free-kick to win the game against QPR at Loftus Road. These sort of talents don't come out of the Cardiff academy too often. He even played at the World Cup, for crying out loud.
Indeed, Aaron Ramsey, another hugely-talented Cardiff academy graduate with umpteen injury troubles over the years, has had to endure the hardships on his winding path to the top.
Given the position Cardiff find themselves in, the reaction to Colwill's latest hip issue, something which has plagued him throughout the season, which kept him out of the Sunderland game on Easter Monday, has been louder than normal. Some have lost their patience, some are just exasperated, most are just gutted that he's going through all this.
Growing pains have been cited and it's easy to believe if you walk past him regularly enough. He is a huge young man now and likely the best part of 6ft 5ins.
Cardiff are not flush with cash to spend in the transfer market. They are not going to bring in a £5million playmaker to solve all of their creative issues and that is even less likely to happen in League One. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, anyway.
Well, they are under an embargo which prohibits them from doing it in the first place, for a start.
It is easy to forget that Colwill is still just 20 and has been in senior football for only two years. He has so much ahead of him and so much untapped talent. He has the ability to rip up not only League One but the Championship, too. He just needs to be injury-free and have a full pre-season under his belt.
He can use both feet, can cross, knows where the back of the net is and has creativity oozing through him, when he is on form and at the peak of fitness. It is not his fault he plays in a position in which Cardiff are sorely lacking, which accentuates his absence.
One suspects the frustration is borne of a knowledge that the team just really needs him now more than ever. He is almost a victim of the talent he has shown fleetingly in his fledgling career thus far. And playing in a struggling team is not likely to help any young player's development.
Without avoiding the subject, too, he has probably become a victim of being one of the only bright spots in a particularly bleak time for the club. The media, searching for one positive story in a seemingly ever-deepening pool of negativity, has clung on to Colwill, and Isaak Davies to a lesser extent, as a silver lining in a coal-coloured cloud.
That, of course, is also not his fault, either.
At some point, though, he has to get on the pitch and realise that potential. That is not saying anything he, the club or the fans don't know.
He has seen Jaden Philogene, just a year his senior, show just what a creative force in the Championship looks like. Alex Scott at Bristol City, a year Colwill's junior, has been a revelation over the Severn and now has Premier League clubs looking at him, with Transfermarkt valuing him at £14million (compared to Colwill being at £1.5m).
It is important, though, to take a step back and appreciate that the Bluebirds potentially have something special on their hands and that talent must be nurtured. Oli Cooper at Swansea City, three years older than Colwill, has had a fantastic, breakthrough season. Sometimes, it takes a little longer, but as long as the talent is coaxed through in the right way, there is always hope.
As Sabri Lamouchi said last month about the young Welsh talent he has at his disposal: "They are not my kids, but I want to take care of them. Because we need them, I love them. But when you love them and work with them, you need to tell them the truth."
Cardiff does need them and, even through the frustration, the fans do love them. Nothing would please them more to see another young Welsh talent come through and take this team by the scruff of the neck and lead them on to a positive path out of this muddled mess.
Despite all the setbacks and disappointments, the talent is there. The potential is clear to see and there is so much time on his side. Being burdened by the weight of expectation comes with the territory, unfortunately. But Colwill, a Cardiff fan who has been in the academy system since the age of eight, now needs some help.
At a time when the club is facing the unthinkable drop out of the Championship, it is difficult to ask for patience from a fan base which is on its knees. But there remains a sliver of hope that, in the long run, this gifted young player can pay it all back in abundance.
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