'It is brilliant for the city - Derry City has always been built on good local players' - Paddy McCourt as the Candystripes continue to promote young local talent to their first-team

Derry City Academy Director Paddy McCourt pictured at the launch of the EA Sports Underage League of Ireland

Derry City Academy Director Paddy McCourt pictured at the launch of the EA Sports Underage League of Ireland Credit: Extratime Team (ETPhotos)

Derry City Academy Director Paddy McCourt has been there as a player – starring for his hometown club and making a name for himself across in the UK shortly after.

Of course, McCourt was not the first, and not even the most recent to do that. James McClean also springs to mind having grown up in the city before making the move to the UK.

But the 37-year-old’s journey serves as an inspiration to those in the Candystripes academy set-up, and he admits the conveyor belt of talent making the step-up from the underage grades to the first-team set-up is big for a city famed for its footballing folklore.

As a result, it is perhaps no surprise that recently appointed boss Ruaidhri Higgins has continued to blood young players – just as his predecessor Declan Devine did.

This comes as Ronan Boyce, Nathan Gartside, Brendan Barr and Patrick Ferry have made the step-up to the club’s first team – along with a few more in their squad.

“Ruaidhri has come in and it has been very busy for him,” McCourt said. “He’s finding his feet (still) and is learning about a lot about the players, but he’s only lost one game since coming in.

“Declan Devine had great belief in those players as well before Ruaidhri came. He blooded them and Ruaidhri is probably reaping the rewards of that.

“The likes of Nathan Gartside, Ronan Boyce, Patrick Ferry and Brendan Barr have all got experience and they were always going to get better as the season went on.

“It’s brilliant for the city,” McCourt added. “Derry City has always been built on good local players.

“And when you’re trying to convince a player that your academy is the best place for them – and you’re able to draw upon our recent history of players going right through to our first-team, it makes our job a lot easier.”



While success at the underage League of Ireland grades is often dominated by many of the Dublin clubs, McCourt insists that success at City’s academy is establishing core values in their players that represent the club – whether they play for the first-team or not.

“Success is players coming through to the first-team from the underage teams,” he said. “If along the way they won a trophy or you get a really good group, that’s fantastic for the players and the team.

“But academy teams don’t make their debuts, players do. The players go on to make careers.

“Yes, you use each other to push each other on but what we really focus on at Derry is producing good people with core values in the academy that we won’t shy away from.

“Yes, we want good players – but we also want good people around the football club.”

With that in mind, and an exciting new era awaiting City’s underage side’s in the National League, McCourt is looking forward to helping the clubs push on this with the correct structures in place.



“With our younger players we’ll try and push things on,” he said. “We’re in early discussions to build our own training ground. If we can do that we can double or treble our training time.

“The leagues have gone from under-19s and under-17s three years ago to under-15s and 14s, so the progress is there. You’ll never make everyone happy.

“Nobody is saying that it’s perfect – there are things that can get better. It’s made great progress and hopefully in years to come you will see players that will come through and play international football.

“Everyone is doing their best to make things better and I’m sure over time we will do that.”

Paddy McCourt was speaking at the launch of the EA SPORTS League of Ireland Underage League Launch on Tuesday afternoon ahead of its return this weekend starting June 26. 

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