Michael Weir: Hibs youngsters can benefit from loan spells rather than development games

As much as Hibs fans will be looking forward to seeing who might arrive at the club during the next few weeks, it’s perhaps time youngsters like Oli Shaw and Fraser Murray should consider going out on loan.

Shaw did so at Stenhousemuir – with some success – but that was a few years ago and, like Murray, he’s found first-team opportunities at Easter Road hard to come by for quite a while now.

As a football player it’s frightening how quickly time goes by. You don’t stay a promising youngster forever.

I can fully understand young players would want to stay around Hibs, but I don’t think you ever learn as much sitting on the bench as you do from getting out there playing against seasoned, experienced professionals in a team environment where there are consequences, points and bonuses to be won and lost.

Going down the leagues and getting that experience can only do a young player good in the long run. Ryan Porteous went into League Two with Edinburgh City and even if he still has a bit to go to realise the potential we all feel he has, the 20-odd games he played there will have done him more good than playing Under-20s.

An attempt has been made to get the reserve league back up and running but clubs like Hibs have already opted out because, invariably, they found the games were simply development squad games under a different name, it was still youngsters learning little from playing against boys their same age.

In my day the reserve league helped get you ready for the first team. I remember one of my first games was against Aberdeen, they had the likes of John McMaster coming back, if my memory serves me correctly, getting himself ready for a European tie.

They gave us an absolute doing, we were beaten 7-0 and I went home thinking just how much I had to do if I wanted to be a professional football player.

A year later we went up there and won 7-0 with the likes of John Collins, Paul Kane and myself in the team having learned from guys like Ally Brazil and Gordon Rae who’d played reserve football when coming back from injury.