In that case my bad. I was never too sure what his role with the RFL involved and in any case thought he'd stood down when he came back to HQ.

They were all impressive mark, really good all round performance, was very impressed with Tom Nicholson watten and Jonah Parsons. Of the wetherby lads...Gibbons looks a proper athlete, big lad witha good turn of pace and footwork, scored a lovely try from round about half way.Field was his usual classy self, calm and composed pulling the strings and Little played out of position on the wing but showed his outstanding footwork a couple of time and had a couple of nice bursts. I watched the game on Bulls facebook, think it will still be on there to watch.

Today is the first day that Clubs can officially talk to scholars from other clubs. Don't be surprised if Warrington try to raid you. They are throwing ridiculous money at kids.

They always do.

Why bother identifying talent when you can let others do it, nurture it, so you can step in right at the end and steal it away.

thing is, they poached 2 of our best prospects with stupid 'petrol' money and ruined them.hopfully others have learned there lesson

Warrington have always been stalkers of junior talent at other clubs and have always offered very nice incentives to entice them over there rather than find talent and nurture it

In recent years they have gazumped us with higher offers for Brooke Broughton,Micky Learmonth and Morgan Smith and none of those lasted very long there.
IMO Morgan Smith was a very talented half back whilst at the Rhinos but the Wolves ruined him by trying to turn him into a 9 without any success

The Wolves have recruited Pete Riding over to the club to hopefully improve their identification of junior talent,he was very highly regarded at identifying junior talent whilst at the Cas Tigers before joining them.
He also had spells at both Wakefield and Huddersfield

If all else fails then they are not shy in offering the big money to young kids

Any chance / rumours we might take anyone from another team?

Not that I'm aware of. Leeds did make a discreet enquiry a few weeks back to see if a lad from another club would be receptive to an offer but he said no.
One of the England squad was holding out expecting an offer from Leeds but it never came.

Cant see Leeds putting an offer in for anyone outside of their club. £10000 is a lot to pay for potential(Look at the mess Warrington 19s are in) history suggest they will just continue to develop their own to the envy of many SL clubs . Ha mind you only 2 16s made the cut for England so the rest cant be good enough???

Thanks Matt and to all for comments. Had lost track of him but young scurr for Bradford started as a Wetherby bulldog, many moons ago.

On the wider point about signing on fees for young players it seems to me to reflect the lack of money around. I knew a few lads nearly 30 years ago who got over £10k and never made it. the best athlete went to Wigan and later played test football but he got over £50k, when you take into account inflation it's world's away from the chicken feed these days. Not surprising that wire can turn a few heads by offering a few sheckles.

Will be interesting to see who gets kept on this year, possibly there will be a couple kept on that maybe wouldnt of been if it wasnt for the change from u19's to u18's at academy level, all clubs are going to need more numbers. Which straight away is a bonus of the new reserves / 18's structure imo

Think we'v only got 9 or 10 first years in our Academy so could see 12 to 14 of the scholarship getting contracts to make up the 18's squad.

Not sure who they are but I believe 5 of the 19s was told 3 weeks ago that they was getting released.

Cheers. From the little iv seen, the looks extremly good, but not seeing it atall with the fullback

Scrimshaw
Martin
Georgiou
Moorhouse
Hamill
Russell

Scrimshaw and Georgiou were always rubbish, and only in because of Scrimshaws dad. I would be shocked if Martin was one.