Reece Chapman-Smith can and has played in every position 1-7 while learning the game at Silcoates school, Sandal RUFC, and Oulton ARLFC.

Since joining the Rhinos he has suffered serious shoulder injuries which have prevented him progressing to the first team.

He has a real rugby brain on him which he shows with his passing and kicking game. Combined with his pace and strength he has got to be played in the middle at half back or centre.

Now that he is back from injury it would not be a surprise to me to seeing him play at 6 in the super 8's this season.

Sounds good, you must rate him very highly?

Watched him since he took up rugby as an 11 year old.

He is very talented with enormous potential if his shoulder injuries are behind him.

I don't want to jinx the kid but his shoulders showed up well on thursday night mate defensively & with strong hand offs carrying the ball.

I rate him highly, and always have done. Always voiced that on here since he was under 15’s. But also pointed out the shame about his injuries, but for that he would have had first team potential a fair while ago. He was a better fullback than Jack at youth.

And speaking of injuries, people are yet to see the best of Alex Sutcliffe who is equally excellent. If those injuries stop he should be straight to first team.

Hopefully reece can stay clear of injury for the rest of the year, am i right in thinking this is his last season of eligibility for the 19's? If so, its a massive season for him

Good to hear we have a good group of youngsters coming through. I'd be interested to hear if it's because we've managed to sign some top kids, or has there been a change in coaching strategy by the club. I know in the past that Gotcha has been critical in the approach to developing youngsters

Im not sure about the coaching strategy, but from my limited knowledge, the 16's have been very well coached for a number of years, the 19's not so much, morley as 19's coach last season was a bit of a disaster imo.

Player wise, i think we'v done a fantastic job of getting some of the best young players in the country into the club.

3 year ago our intake had walker and oledzki who are arguably the best teenage back and forward respectively in the british game, Cameron smith, who was regarded by most as the best player in the whole country at that age group and a bit of a superstar in the making, aswel as whiteley, A sutcliffe and chapman -smith, who are all highly rated by people on here who know more about the academy than i do.

2 year ago the intake included mcconnell, trout and newman, these 3 were the standouts of that years group for me and are all amongst the best there age group in the country, especially newman who's an electric young . Theres also tyler dupree whos a massive unit and seems to be developing into a quality impact prop, i think the club picked him up a bit later than the others, so credit to the coaches for his development.

This years intake could be the best of the lot and has 4 very special players in it imo, Holroyd (prop) martin (backrow) johnston (hooker) broadbent () are all brilliant talents, then theres spence, whos an england academy halfback, moorhouse and whitten who are already doing well at 19's level in there first season at that level.

Iv probably missed a few aswel.

Waite Pullan joined you from us last season. Is he still with you?

I think he’s at Castleford Tigers

Also, although it might sound harsh, but it happens a lot throughout the game, he was mainly signed in the hope of picking up his younger brother Sam at a later date, but Sam chose Cas under 16’s.

The club website still has hiim in the 19s squad but he hasnt featured in any games this season as far as im aware. He was injured a lot last season.

To me looking in the talent ID has stayed the same Damo the club are still recruiting some good and some very average community players .The key turnaround moment for me as someone who watches a lot of 16s and 19s games was the change in 16s coach around 3 years ago since then I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since that appointment we have started producing quality players within the 16s and in turn handing them over to the 19s. The bloke Butterill is not a ‘name’ but fair play to him he’s turned around our ability to produce quality players from our scholarship program whilst encouraging the team to play football . I’m guessing the club realised that because he went full-time last year .

Thanks for the update. I know Mark Butterill from our old amateur days and it's great to hear how he's doing.

I used to love watching the academy before the 1st team game on a Sunday. It was good seeing the standouts and how they progressed. Making me nostalgic about Sunday afternoon rugby

Do you know if the club were interested in amir bourouh, oliver waite and morgan smithies who were all highly rated Yorkshire lads but did there scholarship with wigan and ultimately signed for there academy 19s? We signed quite a few of that siddal team, just interested to know if we were interested and they preferred wigan or we just didnt show an interest.