Tough lesson in northern exposure

Fergus Neil has been there and done it.
Suffice it to say he's unlikely to go there again - the unforgiving, cut-throat English environment, that is.
"I didn't enjoy the football, to be fair," the 19-year-old Hawke's Bay United player said, before tomorrow's 3pm ASB Premiership kick-off against Team Wellington at Newtown Park.
Neil returned from Farnham, south-west of London, three weeks ago having played in the respective local leagues for the Slough Town and Alresford Town football clubs.
"I missed home and the pitch wasn't great and the weather was ... ," the Napier City Rovers winter season player lamented after having travelled by car to semi-professional, non-league Slough Town in June for a few games before switching to Alresford, in New Hamsphire. This was closer to where he lived with his uncle, Alex Neil, a publican, and he worked as a waiter and barman when not playing on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Playing under floodlights, considering he had only trained at Park Island, Napier, at nights, didn't help his cause.
"By six months I had had enough and I just wanted to come back home."
Having had a taste of the English environment, Neil is certainly wiser for it with the experience gleaned outside his comfort zone.
Last Saturday Neil was in the mix of three other Bay United academy players - Andy Bevin, Tom Biss and Marama Thompson - who helped the Bay franchise claim an historic 2-1 victory over table-topping Waitakere United away at Fred Taylor Park.
Neil gleefully snapped up the opportunity to play in the left midfield for 87 minutes after countless senior players joined the walking-wounded list before the game.
He laughs when asked what positon he plays. Preferring to play out wide, Neil says put him down as a "left-flank" player considering he has had to defend in the left-back position despite his spritely phyisque.
The talented midfielder found himself on the fringes during the national under-17 squad camp before the age-group World Cup before he missed out on selection as a defender.
"I was enjoying playing as a defender, but I was disappointed when I didn't make the World Cup," he explains, adding he will be playing in the Central League for the Rovers this winter.
Former franchise coach Jonathon Gould recommended trials with Scottish Premier League Champions Glasgow Celtic's youth team in 2008.
"I didn't get to play any games there because the pitches were frozen," Neil says.
Born in Queenstown to Scotsman Jim Neil and Aucklander Helen Neil, the teenager first kicked a ball at the age of five when the family moved up the Bay.
His father was a former Auckland under-19 rugby player and wanted to steer them to the oval-ball but Neil and brother Cullum, 20, enjoyed the beautiful game so much they stayed with it.
Neil says the young players in the Bay United squad are delighted coach Matt Chandler is experimenting with youth.
"We're coming off a bit of a high but we're still underdogs against Wellington.
"As Matt says, we've got nothing to lose because we've never made the play-offs so we're in a good position to do it," he says of Bay United, who are sitting in fourth place on the table on 15 points, with Canterbury United and Waikato United nipping at their heels a point behind and Otago United on 12 points.
Waitekere play Waikato today while Canterbury host Otago. The Auckland City versus Youngheart Manawatu game has been postponed because of the former's O-League match against AS Magenta in Noumea, New Caledonia, on Monday.
Neil hopes to put his feelers out to play in Australia in the future.
Injured left-back Phil Doran and Brazilian newcomer Lucus da Silva, a midfielder, have been scratched from the line-up.