Not for one minute do I think Wire will freeze at Old Trafford, and I don't think many do. What I do know is that the Leeds players are 100% confident in the Old Trafford environment, and will approach the game in a completely different frame of mind to the Challenge Cup final. This is their patch, and they won't let go of the trophy easily.

Having said all that, part of me fears a Warrington win in the manner of our 2007 win. Not many Saints fans or even players considered the fact that they might lose to Leeds that year, Saints just didn't lose Grand Final's back then, or any finals for that matter. Yet we turned up and did a comprehensive job on them. Leeds will have to be wary of that this time.

...... That's amateur psychology at its worst!!

Whatever you may think, next weekend is a close call - You have just gone to the side who finished top and beat them without your most potent player.....Wire have stuttered through the play-offs and only really got going in the last 40 minutes at Saints.

League positions and previous cup final meetings will all be pretty irrelevant once the match kicks off and to suggest Wire are an overwhelming favourite is being very naive.

"MADE UP FACT OF THE DAY"!

how many of wire's 17 came through their academy today?

Can I clarify, the academy that beat your academy in the grand final today !

That's fair enough, however the real test us how many will make the transition to the senior side

There will probably be a few spots open given the age profile of Warrington's senior side, so I would expect a few of them will get their chance.

The thing with academy side progression to the first team is there are no prizes really for producing steady SL standard players, what really makes a difference is finding a few top class players and keeping them at the club. Lots of clubs can report decent numbers of players that are first team regulars that came through their academy but the real merit comes in having guys like Sinfield, Burrow and McGuire in the team for a decade which is what Leeds success has been built on.

Warrington have been getting better results at youth level over the past few years but whether we have guys of that calibre we will have to see. It's a shame we were so disorganised in the mid 1990s because when we finished joint top of the league in 1994 and Iestyn Harris & Paul Sculthorpe emerging out of the Academy we could have had a different future had those guys played their careers at Wire.

Saville Row wrote


"DOH"!!! I`ll say again..... "Made up fact of the day"!!

Can't argue with that.

Not a point scoring excersise but how many first teamers did come through the wire academy?

Last night Riley, Harrison and Cooper came through academy. Also this season Evans, O'Brien, McCarthy, Blythe, Dwyer, Currie and Williams had varied numbers of starting 17 slots. That's not bad for a side that ( as Sally C pointed out ) was so strapped for cash in the late 1990s that we scrapped the 'A' team to save money. It takes years to re-build a youth set up. As some have pointed out, we can't be doing too badly now given yesterday's Valvoline result.

Yes, with Warrington's Academy it was essentially reboot and rebuild from scratch around 10 years ago. We had scrapped the academy temporarily in the late 1990s. Richie Mathers was on the books as a schoolboy around that time before he went over to Leeds.

We set up a scholarship system with William Beamont school and have put more and more effort into the youth set up but also we were starting from a much further behind position because compared to places like Leeds and Wigan or the Cas/Wakey area that have lots of junior clubs around, Warrington doesn't historically have the same density of junior players and clubs on our doorstep. In that context we have done really well in terms of catch up over the last decade.

In terms of really good players that we have produced, since Harris and Scully came through in the mid 1990s there is only really Paul Wood and Chris RIley that have been consistent top SL players that would interest the top clubs. Ian Sibbit is the other one that went on to have a long SL career albeit most of it not with us. Paul Noone l thought was a decent player but just as he looked to have cracked it in 2005, he seemed to fall out of favour in 2006 and after being released by us disappeared. The more recent generation of young players, Harrison, Cooper, McCarthy, Evans, are good though, and have been able to hold their own in a top side.

At the moment I am fairly optimistic that we will have a fair few SL standard players from the ranks coming through as the Academy team has been strong for the last few years and we have had a good set of representative call ups at junior level. The real question is if/where the likes of Sinfield/McGuire/Burrow are going to come from. No matter how good the coaching is they can't manufacture a player of that calibre they can only help players reach their own maximum potential. Those Leeds guys not only had huge natural ability but also great attitudes and mental discipline which made them reach and stay at the top, again this is born not made.

As for the argument that Warrington have been buying up young talent from other clubs this is true, but this is nothing unusual from us, top sides have done it all the time. Since we have been able to spend up to the full salary cap we have been spending the same as the other top clubs but the lack of having a lot of big guns from our own academy in the first team has left us with more apparent signing power than our rivals: Leeds, Wigan and Saints are having to use salary cap space on Sinfield, McGuire, O'Loughlin, Tomkins, Roby etc and those guys will be on good salaries. Although we'd love to have had those guys come through, the fact we haven't, has left us with more spare cash lying over hence we've been the front runners in the market for the best young players at the smaller clubs eg Myler, Ratchford, Atkins etc. This is a better use of funds than signing ageing players or big names for the sake of it.

But also lets be honest other big clubs have done this all the time. Guys like Iestyn Harris and Gareth Ellis were huge players for Leeds that came through smaller clubs academy systems and Leeds don't need to feel guilty about that, neither do Saints for signing Sculthorpe and Wilkin. People notice Warrington because they have become more active in that market in recent years. If we do manage to bring through some big guns out of our own youth system though we will have less salary cap space and so will be less big players in the market.

I would love to know how Warrington do manage their salary cap with all the big names in it !!!

That's because they play for the love of the game and to win trophies at a big club. Also I imagine the opportunity to work under [iuber[/i coach tony smith would be a factor as well.

They're the new big game team, they've replaced saints with their star studded line up and their 'win every single final we play in' team.