Elliot Owens has a look at some Rovers youngsters who have gone on to forge good careers

Bristol Rovers are more or less assured to finish in the midtable regions of the third tier of English Football for a second season, sitting 7 points off the playoff places with 15 to play for.

Following the recent injury epidemic that Darrell Clarke faces, he has had no choice but to name academy prospects amongst the substitute bench, with a number looking in contention to get valuable game time as the season draws to a close.

I thought I would take a look at past Rovers academy players that have gone on to make a decent footballing career, in the wake of the potential latest crop waiting in the wings.

Scott Sinclair

Sinclair signed up for The Gas as a nine-year-old schoolboy and made his first-team debut six years later aged of 15 years, 277 days – which made him the second youngest Rovers first-team debutant at the time.

After playing just two professional games in BS7, he was snapped up by Premier League giants Chelsea in 2005 for a tribunal fee of around £200,000.

The 29-year-old scored 27 goals for Swansea in 2010/11, including a hattrick in the Championship playoff final against Reading, which confirmed Swansea as the first Welsh team ever to play in the Premier League.

The Bath-born winger is now in his most prolific spell with Celtic, who are one win away from a seventh straight SPL title, and has featured in every step of the England youth system as well as scoring for Great Britain in the 2012 Olympic games.

Lewis Haldane

After a spell with Southampton’s youth system, Haldane moved to BS7 in the 2002-03 season.

He scored in his first Rovers start in a 4-0 battering away at Darlington in the following season and managed six goals and seven assists in 29 appearances.

Of his 147 games in the quarters, remarkably 60 had come in the promotion season of 2006/07, including putting in a man-of-the-match performance in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final in Cardiff.

Haldane had a couple of loan spells before moving to Port Vale, but his career was cut short when a nasty leg injury forced retirement five years ago.

Ryan Clarke

The local 35-year-old joined with the blue side of the city at the turn of the millennium and made 22 first team appearances over six years.

Clarke’s most successful stint between the sticks came at Oxford – where he spent half a dozen years – winning Player of the Year when the U’s were promoted back into the Football League in 2010.

He has faced Rovers on a number of occasions since moving away, which includes the 6-1 League Cup defeat also in 2010, in goal for Oxford.

The shotstopper is currently helping Torquay United to avoid the drop from The National League after limited game time for Northampton, Wimbledon and Eastleigh.

Sean Rigg

29-year-old Rigg signed for the Bristol Academy of Sport, before making his first-team debut two years later in 2006.

The forward will probably be best remembered for his double jaw break against Barrow in The FA Cup, which landed offender James Cotterill a prison sentence, three months after his debut.

Rigg, like Haldane, moved to Vale Park where he scored 13 times in two years between 2010 and 2012 after falling out of favour under Paul Trollope.

He retired from the professional game to become a tattoo artist earlier this year.

The current Rovers side also contains four academy graduates, all of who play a significant role; maybe just maybe Rovers could find a couple more stars of the future in the next couple of weeks…