'We've got our identity back' – Eric Kinder on the talent rolling off the Blackburn Rovers academy production line

But as you walk down the corridors of the academy that serves as Jack Walker’s lasting legacy one message screams out: we are Blackburn Rovers and we are proud of it.

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And, when it comes to producing young talent, Rovers have plenty to be proud about.

From Damien Duff to David Dunn, and from Phil Jones to current first-team captain Grant Hanley, a steady production line of talent has rolled off the Brockhall factory floor.

Those players, and many more besides, are commemorated on the walls at Rovers’ academy base.

It is an inspirational sight.

“When I came back here I didn’t want anything on the corridor that was personal to the staff – motivation posters, philosophies or visions for the future, things like that” said Kinder, a lifelong Rovers fan who, since March last year, has acted as the club’s head of academy.

“All that stuff is round the back side, where the classrooms are, where the opposition don’t go.

“When the opposition walked in through that door and down the corridor I wanted them to know exactly where they were.

“So all the pictures on the walls of the players who have graduated from the academy are now life-sized instead of little 10x10 head shots. They stand out at you.

“I get great pleasure hearing opposition players come down and say, ‘bet you can’t guess where we are today’. Sarcastic comments like those, I love them. Yes, dead right, we’re Blackburn Rovers.

“What I found when I came back was I thought we had gone soft. I thought we’d lost that edge we had when I’d been here before under Bobby Downes and Robert Kelly. People hated coming here.

“People didn’t want to play against a Blackburn Rovers side. They always accused of being rough and tough and in their face. But that was just an excuse. We’d play football against anybody who wanted to play football against us and if they wanted to fight us, we’d fight them.

“I thought we’d lost that but now we’ve redeveloped that; that spirit.

“They’ve got to want to play for the shirt. It’s got to mean something. I didn’t think we had that before. I think they put that shirt on and it could have been for anybody. But we’ve got that now.”

And what Kinder also hopes Rovers have got is a group of players who sooner rather than later will have their own pictures on roll of honour.

The second-year scholars have had a season to favour.

They finished fourth in the Under-18 Premier League North Division, reaching both the elite stage of the end-of-season play-offs as well as the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup, while also seamlessly stepping up to the under-21s, who made it to the Under-21 Premier League Division Two play-offs.

Ten have been handed professional contracts and next season the likes of captain Scott Wharton, Lewis Hardcastle, Joe Rankin-Costello and Lewis Mansell will make up the bulk of the under-21s development squad led by Rovers academy graduates Damien Johnson and Dunn.

But the picture did not look so healthy when Kinder re-joined Rovers in 2013 as under-21 head coach after seven years away with Carlisle United.

“When I came back three years ago our under-21s were a shambles,” said Kinder, who first joined the club in 1999 as an academy coach.

“It was full of people who should never have been at Blackburn Rovers. It was full of people who didn’t care. It was full of people who were brought in by I don’t know who. It was a mess and, to be fair to Gary Bowyer at the time, we worked them all out of the club and we were left with nothing.

“So this group always had a chance of being the under-21s but what they needed to do was prove they could handle it, and they’ve proved that.

“We wouldn’t have put 10 on pro contracts if we didn’t think they could do it. We would have gone out and found some releases from Manchester City, Everton and Liverpool.

“But the pleasing thing about this group is that they’re basically all from the north west of England, they’ve all been with us a few years, they’re nearly all on the same length of contract, and they’re all on the same wages. They’re all starting off on the same level playing field.

“They’ve all grown up together, they’ve all lived in each other’s pockets for two years, and I can only think of two instances all season when we’ve had a couple of squabbles.

“Now usually when you put lads together that age together, you have hell breaking loose every now and again, but they are really good friends, and it showed during the day, on the trips, and in matches.

“We drew with Middlesbrough in the first game of season, then got beat 3-1 by Manchester City, and then I don’t think we got beat again after that until October.

“The scene had been set and they were also entertaining to watch as well. They had an unbelievable work ethic and the main thing is they didn’t like failure. They didn’t like losing.

“Then they all started breaking into the under-21s very early and it turned out at the end of the season that eight players who lost at Chelsea in the FA Youth Cup semi-finals also lost at Arsenal in the under-21 play-off semi-final.

“We’ve managed to put together, for the first time in a long time, a proper development squad that can all grow up together and they’ve all got time to do it.”

But while those players have now flown from the Academy nest, the first-year scholars showed their own promise by beating all-conquering Chelsea 3-0 thanks to a first-half hat-trick from under-18s full debutant Danny Butterworth on the final day of the campaign.

“You start thinking, ‘wow, can we keep that going’, because that’s what we have to do,” said Kinder.

“Before you know it the Whartons, Platts, Mansells, Hardcastles, Tomlinsons and Travises will be 22 or 23. Time flies.

“But for now we can all go away on holiday and look at ourselves and say, ‘we’ve done all right this year’.

“Now the challenge is can four or five of this little group we’ve got this year go through to the first team.”

And on to the wall.