FA rules, enforced by the Lancashire FA, are that any child signed for a Cat 3 Academy or above can't play at local league level. The reason being that the Academy has to invest in coaching staff, facilities etc. and doesn't want their work diluted by a coach at another club giving them different advice.
I totally sympathise with the comments above (although the comment about Stewart Drummond is utterly stupid). Getting Category 3 status at this time of the year means that most teams who've lost players to Morecambe's academy have no way to find additional players. My team, Bowerham Juniors U11s has a 12 player squad, which was great for seven-a-side but now we progress to nine-a-side and we've lost one player to the Academy, which leaves us with just 11. It is the same for teams climbing up from U8s to U9s and U12s to U13s.
In our league I understand that Heysham Blue Star have folded, Westgate Wanderers and Westgate Rangers have merged and other teams have lost players. Worse still Trimpell and Bare, who put out loads of teams have lost their use of pitches at Lancaster & Morecambe College because of other teams using them (I believe the Academy teams but could be wrong). It has been incredibly disruptive.
Additionally, the Service to Youth League
http://full-time.thefa.com/ProcessPubli ... e=33836167 has also lost the use of the 3G pitches at the back of The Globe, which were provided at a substantial discount during winter to enable games to take place that would have been lost because of the weather.
There are quite a lot of people moaning but there are upsides as well as downsides.