Reed has been with the club since the age of eight and is part of their
astonishing conveyor belt of talent.
A breakthrough star could easily have been striker Sam Gallagher, who has also
been on the bench recently. Then there are defenders Matt Target and Jordan
Turnbull and wings Omar Rowe and Jake Sinclair, brother of West Bromwich
Albion’s Scott.
Reed, 18, made his first-team debut as a substitute in the League Cup at
Barnsley and then made his first Premier
League appearance as a substitute in the home draw against
Manchester City.
Born in Worthing, he is a strong midfielder with a big character. He appears
ideally suited to the Premier League and Southampton are determined to give
him a chance to shine.
Jason Burt
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Cricket
Alex Lees
After England’s
worst defeat in Australia,
the one on Adelaide’s bland pitch, two top England and Wales Cricket Board
officials were asked to select what they thought would be the England team
for their next Test in Adelaide in four years’ time. The order of England’s
top three for 2017-18 varied, but the names did not: Alastair Cook, Joe Root
and Alex Lees.
Lees, who plays – like Root – for Yorkshire is a sort of cross between Cook
and Root. He has Cook’s stature, left-handedness, composure, hunger for runs
and maturity, blended with Root’s athleticism and flexibility. A formidable
combination if, aged 20, he is allowed to develop at his own pace.
He opened the batting for the Performance Squad team that played in Perth just
before England were overwhelmed in the third Test. On the back foot he had
Cook’s solidity but when the ball was pitched up, he eased on to his front
foot and into the drive far more fluently – and he prefers to use his height
to drive straight, not one of those left-handers who opens the face and
squirts to third man.
No less attractive is his running between wickets: it comes from the same
stable as Root and Jonny Bairstow. In other words the three young
Yorkshiremen run as dynamically as David Warner, the first run always taken
flat out to put pressure on the fielder. This running has been one of the
most encouraging sights of this tour, as it suggests the shape of England’s
long-term future.
Not only does Lees have the skill to score 275 in a championship match against
Derbyshire, he is also captaincy material, being wise beyond his years after
a family bereavement.
Scyld Berry
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Formula One
Kevin Magnussen
In the absence of a British rookie about whom to wax lyrical, Kevin Magnussen
is probably the next best thing. The 21-year-old Dane will drive for a
British team, McLaren, next season, where he is contracted to fill the race
boots of Sergio Pérez.
Whether Magnussen, whose father, Jan, drove for McLaren and Stewart in the
1990s, follows Pérez out of McLaren’s revolving door at the end of his
rookie season remains to be seen, but ‘Mini Mag’ arrives with glowing
references from his brief career in junior formulae.
He blasted his way to the Formula Renault 3.5 title this year – a series
described by McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh as “a much higher
quality championship than GP2”, which is traditionally seen as F1’s feeder
series – and has impressed in his F1 test outings to date.
There will be a lot of pressure on Magnussen as he makes his bow at a huge
team and is measured against an experienced world champion in Jenson Button;
all in a season in which Formula One will experience arguably the biggest
rule changes in a generation with the move to radical new power units.
Almost the most impressive thing about the youngster, however, is his utter
fearlessness. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in Abu Dhabi, he said
he had no qualms about putting his reputation on the line at such a young
age.
“It’s true there is a bigger risk in going to a top team because if you don’t
perform then you’re out of Formula One,” he told me.
“But for me, if I get to a top team and don’t perform then it means I’m not
good enough. I am in Formula One to be world champion. I believe that I am
capable of that.”
Tom Cary
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Athletics
Morgan Lake
She has a name befitting a Hollywood movie actress, and Morgan Lake certainly
has star quality when it comes to her athletic prowess.
The 16-year-old Wellington College schoolgirl is the latest in a long line of
heptathlon talents to step off the British conveyor belt, following in the
footsteps of Denise Lewis, Kelly Sotherton, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Katarina
Johnson-Thompson, and the teenager has the physical tools to outshine them
all. This summer she set a British under-17 heptathlon best of 5,474 points,
putting her second on the world list for her age group, and was also ranked
No 2 in the world for the high jump after producing a stunning leap of 1.90
metres. She also holds the UK under-17 triple jump record.
The one concern is her temperament under pressure. She imploded at this year’s
World Youth Championships in Donetsk when the heptathlon gold medal was
within touching distance.
Having built up a commanding 198-point lead by the end of the first day, she
went to pieces on the long-jump runway and the best she could manage was a
leap of 4.63m, costing her a potential 400 points.
The distraught teenager followed up with a weak javelin throw of 30.81m and
then withdrew from the competition before the final event, the 800m.
It must be hoped that she will have learned from the experience when she
competes in the heptathlon at the World Junior Championships in Eugene,
Oregon, in the summer, and there is also talk of her competing for England
in the high jump at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
It was at the 2006 Commonwealths in Melbourne that Ennis-Hill first came to
attention with her heptathlon bronze. This could be Lake’s turn to step into
the spotlight.
Simon Hart
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Boxing
Carl Frampton
Carl Frampton, the man nicknamed ‘The Jackal’, dealt with dangerous Spaniard
Kiko Martínez with aplomb in February. Apart from being caught on the
counter by the heavy-handed champion – which showed that Frampton has a
strong chin – he showed great movement, stuck to his game-plan and, when
it counted, put Martínez away for the first time in his career with a
chopping right hand to become European super bantamweight champion. It was
precise, powerful and emphatic.
The 25-year-old from Belfast is an aggressive fighter, but has the rare skill
of being able to attack going backwards, too. It will serve him well against
the many Hispanic fighters at elite level in the 8st 10lb division.
The protégé of Barry McGuigan, the former world champion, he moves
intelligently and after 17 fights unbeaten, is on his way to the top class.
He also has an intriguing back story – a Protestant with a Catholic fiancée
in an area once riven by sectarianism.
Frampton has a domestic rival at world level with England’s Scott Quigg having
won the World Boxing Association world title in 2013.
Paul Butler, the super flyweight from Liverpool, and Billy Joe Saunders, the
middleweight, are two other young fighters to watch for. Saunders could be
on the cusp of world title contention by the end of 2014, on course to
become the first English traveller to win a world crown.
Gareth A Davies
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Tennis
Kyle Edmund
Andy Murray
has appeared in every other tennis entry in our end-of-year lists; he might
as well appear in this one, too. His family is, after all, the starting
point for every positive tennis story in this country. So it stands to
reason that he should have been entertaining Kyle Edmund, Britain’s
outstanding male prospect, during his Miami training block over the past
month.
Edmund will turn 19 next week, but his position at No 310 makes him one of the
leading teenagers in the world game; only his contemporary Nick Kyrgios of
Australia, at No 185, stands higher.
It is true many promising Britons have struggled to convert such promise.
Oliver Golding, the junior US Open winner of two years ago, has been slow to
build momentum since turning professional.
In Edmund’s case, though, most judges feel he will break the top 100 sooner or
later, thanks to a level-headed attitude and a readiness to commit himself
in the gym, while spending time with Murray will have done no harm.
“The fitness work [in Florida] has been the toughest I’ve ever done,” Edmund
told The Sunday Telegraph last week. “It’s going to put me in great stead.”
Rather than travelling to the Australian Open qualifying event next month,
Edmund will play a Futures event in Florida on clay, a surface where he is
unusually at home for a British player. If he could put together a strong
run, he might even come into contention for Davis Cup selection in San
Diego.
Simon Briggs
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Horse racing
Ali Brewer
Ali Brewer may not be the most obvious choice of racing’s rising star of 2014,
particularly as she has not come in through the regular assistant-trainer
route whereby you work as a right-hand man to more senior figures.
Her background is in hunting and eventing – she represented Britain in
three-day events – and together with her soon-to-be husband Sam Stronge, a
former jockey turned agent, she set up a
pre-training yard in Eastbury, a small village just outside Lambourn,
providing horses for trainers such as Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls and
Charlie Longsdon.
In 2012 the 30-year-old took out a permit, which was upgraded to a full
training licence in 2013 and her early results have been little short of
astounding. In November she had a strike-rate of 44 per cent.
Martin Pipe started out by buying horses out of claimers cheaply and improving
them. This is not to say she is the next Martin Pipe but Proud Times and
Meetings Man, both bought cheaply out of claimers, have gone on to notch
three-timers for her, Proud Times winning three over hurdles, Meetings Man
winning one over hurdles and another two on the Flat.
A flagship horse is always a prerequisite for taking two steps up the ladder
at a time and Royal Guardsman should well win a big novice chase at some
stage before the season is out.
He was travelling well in a race at Sandown recently when a mistake at the
second-last put paid to his chances, but when he gets his act together he
looks a horse to follow.
The couple’s Castle Piece Stables has room for 30 horses and at the rate they
are going they will be full by the end of 2014.
Marcus Armytage
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Rugby Union
Jack Nowell
Cornishman Nowell is a full-back by inclination. Indeed that was where he
played, and scored a try, for England
Under-20s in their Junior World Cup triumph last summer. But it is on the
wing that he has mainly featured for Exeter since appearing last season and
winning the Breakthrough Player Award for the in the LV Cup.
And it is on the wing that England are really struggling with injury just now,
with Christian Wade and Marland Yarde both definitely out for the Six
Nations, and Ben Foden probably so.
With Chris Ashton so horribly short of form in the recent autumn series, it
could just be that Nowell is a wild-card selection in the Six Nations, which
starts next month.
You suspect that Gloucester’s Jonny May, who made his debut last summer in the
second Test against Argentina and won the LV Breakthrough Award the season
before Nowell, will be the likeliest to gain promotion.
But Stuart Lancaster, the head coach, is always keen to reward form, as he did
with scrum-half Lee Dickson in the autumn, so January will be hugely
important for all wings in the country.
Do not discount Anthony Watson either. He is mostly at full-back for Bath, but
he was on the wing when Nowell was at full-back for that Under 20s final in
France. The 20-year-old Nowell is already in the Saxons squad and was in
fine form in December having missed the start of the season while resting a
knee complaint.
Steve James
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Golf
Tyrrell Hatton
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Tyrrell Hatton sounds as if he should be a
boxer, as the fight the 22-year-old from Marlow has shown simply to graduate
from golf’s undercards marks him out as a big-time contender.
Hatton seemed set for a visit to the hell known as Qualifying School as time
ran out in the Challenge Tour season. But with a startling finish to the
campaign – kick-started by a second-place finish at the lucrative Kazakhstan
Open – the boy from Harleyford Golf Club hurtled into the top 10 in the
money list and so earned himself a card for the European Tour proper.
Can he handle the step up in class? Well, his two-year education on Europe’s
feeder tours has certainly afforded him the appropriate grounding and he
possesses the capability and self-belief to embark on big birdie runs when
his putter consents to heat up.
Hatton has won four times as a professional already and is clearly fulfilling
the potential shown when he qualified for the 2010 Open at St Andrews as a
18-year-old amateur and then by representing England.
There have been setbacks. He missed out on the 2011 Walker Cup, a
disappointment which steeled his resolve as he turned pro. Tom Lewis, Andy
Sullivan, Tommy Fleetwood and Eddie Pepperell were some of Hatton’s amateur
peers and all have since gone on to establish themselves on tour.
Not only does this give Hatton a ready-made social circle on what can be a
lonely circuit, it also provides an all-important gauge. “I played a lot of
golf with those guys so it should be good fun,” he says. “And if I can do
similar things, I’d be very happy.” In truth, he expects to.
James Corrigan