No club shall directly or indirectly approach any boy Premier League regulations state who is registered as an associate

“No club shall directly or indirectly approach any boy,” Premier League regulations state, “who is registered as an associate schoolboy with another club, with a view to inducing the boy to register with such first-mentioned club either as an associate schoolboy or a trainee.”Talking about the Brown allegations last week, Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, was adamant that the club had not broken any rules “We are quite happy to answer the charge,” he said “We have nothing at all to feel guilty about In fact we were probably third in line to speak to the boy. In Manchester the parents of a gifted eight-year-old by the name of Kane Jackson allege they were offered pounds 50,000 for their son to join a club’s school of excellence. They turned it down, although it did not stop them hiring the football agent Eric Hall for a short spell, which led in turn to Kane displaying his skills to a 20,000 crowd in Dubai.One First Division scout said he knew that clubs used inducements to tempt promising boys away “Put it this way,” he said. “When you play the really big teams the temptation is to rest your better players. The last thing you need is letting them know you’ve got a 12-year-old who could be the next George Best You do and he’ll be out of the door.”The parents don’t help.

Now clubs can sign boys as young as nine for their schools of excellence; until two years ago clubs were not allowed to have any link with a boy until he was 14.That was the theory, just as it is theoretically illegal to give inducements to parents. But that has always gone on and, as the age limit has plummeted, so the potential rewards have escalated. Liam Brady’s mother was offered a washing machine for her son’s signature – not by Arsenal, it should be added – while other parents have allegedly been offered new cars or money thinly disguised as a fee “for a bit of scouting”.Those are minor temptations compared to the rewards available today from a child’s exceptional ability as a footballer. “There have been rumours about clubs for years,” a spokesman at the FA said, “but there has never been any proof.”Proof has always been the problem and in a world without substance rumours gain a credence, particularly as emphasis on schoolboy football has been intensified because of rocketing transfer fees at senior level and the FA’s new rules. The FA has almost unlimited powers to punish clubs, but a hefty fine and an order to pay compensation seems the most likely outcome, although the latter would be nowhere near the pounds 750,000 which Arsenal are alleged to have demanded.United vigorously deny anything untoward, but nevertheless their activities in the ambiguous world of encouraging promising boys to pledge themselves will be investigated in an unprecedented way in modern times. The question is: are they getting the pick of the crop fairly?Last week they were charged with illegally poaching David Brown from Oldham Athletic, a second case involving a 16-year-old following a hearing into their acquisition of Matthew Wicks two months ago.

Brown had been with Oldham for five years; Wicks, an England schoolboy international, had been with Arsenal since the age of 14.If either case is proved, the penalty will be severe. Manchester United’s youth policy does not have the stranglehold it had when the club needed to buy only one player between 1951 and 1958 but it is the envy of every club in England. Something amiss, they believed, could only have tempted them to Old Trafford.
Forty years on and similar bitterness seeps through the game. Jones and Pegg had been Yorkshire schoolboys who Wednesday had anticipated signing. The other pounds 20,000 was for Mark Jones and David Pegg.”

Both players had died at Munich, but sympathy had not extended to forgiveness at Hillsborough, where resentment ran openly and deep.