Chris Rigg, at 16-years-old, has intimated his delay in putting pen-to-paper on signing a contract with Sunderland is dependant on the identity of the club's new head coach, but it's hard to understand why this entered the public domain?
There are players of significant experience, their careers laden with silverware, who don't publicly suggest their existence at any one club is contingent on who the managerial figure is. There was always the possibility that onlookers may interpret it as potentially bordering on profound arrogance, given his youth and inexperience. Then again, what the real reason is may be based around a desire for greater short-to-medium-term security for him and his. And that is wholly understandable.
Rigg can now sign professional terms with his club of choice, having turned 17, and it is expected that the rewards on offer from elsewhere will comfortably surpass that which would retain his services at the Stadium of Light. In short, in the game of contract cards, he is in possession of several aces. He, like anyone else, has the fundamental right to chart his own career path.
The game, for some, has changed beyond all recognition. One constant, however, is for players to find new ways to disguise that which tends to matter most: money.
I wasn’t that different myself, nor my contemporaries.
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It shouldn't have to be this way. The broad public, football fan included, understand that a healthy bank balance has the potential to offset one of life's ongoing worries. Further, in a playing career that doesn't trouble middle age, there is an understanding of 'as much' and 'as quickly as possible.' That is without factoring in the fate that befalls some, yours truly an example, and where any development is stifled at a much earlier stage through circumstances beyond our control.
As a young player, matters such as the tactical preferences of a manager don't tend to register. Nor, if being brutally honest, does the success of the team. Certainly not when coming at the expense of our own progress. The 'team game' is factual, but a career and all that goes with it is individual and much more aligned with our human instincts.
Football has a way of educating those involved that humility should be an ever-present feature of your public offerings - that demonstrating any notion of 'self' is anathema. Hence we have a conveyor belt of centre-forwards in post-match probing as they try to convince us that who scores doesn't matter - even after they've taken the ball away from a designated penalty taker.
Rigg will undoubtedly do well in his career, assuming any unforeseeable and unwelcome events don’t intervene. How well is hard to know. The newsworthiness of his career to date has been as much about age as outcomes. Even within the support, there is a consensus that tends to settle around being no worse than others.
What he has done, however, has been sufficient for him to feature for three different managers. All of this long before he is lawfully entitled to join his social seniors and determine the trajectory the nation takes post-election. I would hope that this, the faith of Messrs Mowbray, Beale and Dodds, would be enough to inform him there is a pathway to the first team with Sunderland.
That, of course, is not all that matters. He has to consider his future - financial and football - and the modern game, more than at any time in history, would have those considerations in such an order and not merely owing to the alphabet.
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