THE success that Jake Hastie has enjoyed this season shows the benefit of top flight Scottish clubs farming their academy kids out to lower league sides for experience, Alloa manager Jim Goodwin has claimed.
Hastie, who had only made three first team appearances as a substitute before the 2018/19 campaign kicked off, and was sent to Recreation Park on loan.
But the then 19-year-old flourished at the Ladbrokes Championship outfit; he featured in no fewer than 23 games for the part-time side and netted four goals.
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The winger went from strength to strength on when he returned to Fir Park - he has scored seven goals in 14 matches, earned a call-up to the Scotland Under-21 team and is poised to join Rangers.
Goodwin, who revealed that he has been inundated with phone calls from Premiership clubs as a result of the dramatic progress that Hastie made, believes it shows how dropping down a level can help kids come good.
"Young boys have to go out on loan," he said. "Playing reserve team football, in my opinion, doesn’t match up, it isn’t the same.
"We gave Jake a chance to come and play at a good level against good teams and he proved that he was more than capable of doing that.
"We are all over the moon for him. It is really important for us that the loans are successful and people can see the benefits of kids coming from academies to clubs like ourselves because it works for everybody. It is a win-win situation.
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"We have been very lucky. Not many of the loans we have had in the two years I have been here haven’t been a success. It is at the stage now where instead of me phoning clubs begging them for a player they are actually phoning me and offering me their best young players. It is a really nice position for me to be in.
"It shows that clubs are recognising the work that we are doing now with young players – we giving them confidence and allowing them to make mistakes.
"That is really important for any young player, to know that they are allowed to make mistakes and have the odd bad game here and there and it isn’t the end of the world. That is what we have been able to do for them."
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