Stevie Ward has had a good season and a half longer around the 1st team than Sutcliffe.

He still looks like a distinctly average, under sized second rower who brings very little to the first team. Hopefully it's all part of his development but it's frustrating to watch.

Sutcliffe has a much harder job as a youngster to play in the halves. It speaks volumes that the club have entrusted him with that role and not Ward.

Ward's not a half-back Gareth. He never was a half-back.

He played 6 in the Under 19s because he was probably the best player in the age group and they wanted him to get as much ball in his hands as possible. It's the way eager parents run an Under 10s side, and reflects badly on a professional setup IMO.

Ward had good ball skills when he was a junior IIRC he played half back at a game against Bradford at Odsal. Unfortunately that appears to have been coached out of him?

Using S.Ward as a battering ram doesn't exactly aid his development either imo.
For me he should be used as a ball playing 13 but its not how we play nowadays we tend to use the extra prop or battring ram esque Delaney.

He was named on the teamsheet at 7, in a game that Leeds went into without either McGuire or Burrow IIRC.

So it was more a case of make do and mend than anything else.

World of difference between having those skills in the much slower pace of Under 16 and Under 19 rugby, and being able to replicate them at first team level when your thinking time is much reduced. As Sutcliffe is starting to find out.

Agreed but you shouldn't have the natural skills you have coached out of you either?

A different view......

Perhaps these players had natural skills to excel at certain age levels.

Perhaps these players were good enough to shine against same aged players, 75/80% of whom won't reach SL standard.

But perhaps those natural skills were never good enough when faced with better older opposition.

Perhaps some people over-praised players in age groups, and when they look shaky at open age the easier thing is to say the "club failed" these guys rather than say we might've got ahead of ourselves and the lad isn't as good as we rambled on about?

Are the players in the positions they'll eventually suit? Perhaps not, but didn't Sinfield start out as a 2nd rower???

Perhaps instead of getting despondent and moaning about the clubs academy players because certain posters see them look good at a certain level and it not translate to first team......just perhaps they exercise some caution and realise looking good at 16/17 is a complete different ballpark to becoming a week in week out established SL player.

Maybe it's not the club doing wrong that this super talent at 16 isn't a super talent at 21......maybe they were never the super talent you thought all again.....but we know they'd never want to admit that.

I won't hold my breathe though.

Sinfield was a half back at academy level so nothing has really changed for him

It is very unlikely that the natural skills a player possess cannot be improved with appropriate coaching surely the coaches should be improving the weaknesses as well as developing the qualities to make a more complete player

Just guessing here Printer, and this is no dig so please don't take it that way, but you haven't played the game have you?

Yes I have thanks, quite a bit. Mixture of centre/2nd row if you must know.

Clear from your posts that due to being involved with juniors you have rose tinted glasses on for them to get games to the point it reaches impatience.

He's certainly not a second rower. He played a lot of his junior rugby as a half or a ball playing 13. He excelled at that level at it. It certainly doesn't appear that they see that as his role at first team level.

If they do see him as a 2nd rower then I am afraid that the hype doesn't appear to have been warranted, entering into his 3rd full season in the 1st team he looks like a distinctly average 2nd rower. Can anyone tell me that last time he made a tackle burst or offload against SL opposition?

It appears to me that they have taken an excellent ball handler and made him into the prototype McDermott head down up 2nd rower.

Whilst there is no doubting your view based on this season, last season up to his injury he was our best back rower, then injury struck. He has hardly played three seasons has he. He played back end of season in 2012, and ended up playing in a CC final and a GF, then last year two thirds of season he was injured.

He had all the ingredients to be just like O'Loughlin. But the club coaching staff took a different direction with him. Whether they are shown to be right only time will tell.