Thing is we have Walters, Gannon, Smith in the back row. O’Connor possibly too although I still suspect he might make a hooker in the end. It’s going to be extremely difficult to break into the Leeds pack.

Maybe centre is where he’ll break through and an Edwards/Broadbent combination could be interesting. I don’t know - good problems to have though.

Really am excited to see this group develop. Definitely up there with the best group of young talent we’ve had.

19's beat Newcastle 42 - 22 tonight...In truth, it was a very poor performance against a poor team, night and day from the 17's quality display last night.

Forgive my ignorance, but does the same coach have both teams?

Yeah very sloppy. Wallace deserved his try, worked hard all game. I do like Max Simpson. Good runs out of dummy half by Burton. Ben Mayhew has something about him and good to see Atkinson showing some skills.

Mark Butterill does 16s and 17s team. Chev Walker has 19s.

As Marty says..Mark Butterill takes the 16s and 17s, he's an excellent coach imo, over a number of years he has had his teams playing lovely, winning rugby..regularly putting big scores on the likes of saints and wigan.

The 19s are coached by Chev Walker

Poor performance buf given team hasnt played for 3 weeks, its full time players wasnt available and weve no halves at all at this age group its fairly understandable.

Really like Ben Meyhew, always have, but hes no chance of making it at Leeds
AJ, Tom Nicholson-Watton and Max Simpson are good players but theres not much in that team last night.

Agree with you. To be fair I thought Thunder were pretty big and physical, better than I thought but the overall bar wasn't very high (I'm sure with mitigation).

Interested in your comments re. Mayhew - not big enough Marty? I really like him - he is smart and has a brilliant engine.

Age-wise we seem to have a real concentration at U17 level, where we have a very handy set of players indeed.

This years u17’s is very important because the Aussie Schoolboys are due to tour next year to take on England Academy.
Morgan Gannon & Levy Edwards will still be eligible and I’ve been impressed with Will Gatus so far so he could be a chance. Max Simpson is another who could make an Academy squad if he keeps improving.

Good point.

I assume Jack Sinfield would be in the mix as well, and maybe one or two others.

We could easily have 4-5 in the full Academy side.

I like Mayhew hes brave and whole-hearted and he works hard. Hows he going to get past all the players in front of him tho? He is a bit under sized same with Billy Davies, who i really like also.

Walker just comes across so poor in his interviews.

Chev is fine but there are several issues with the 19s at the moment. Firstly we released many of the older lads so its a very young team, the better players are in the full time squad, which is a good thing if they are available, but they currently arent. They are playing a game every 3 weeks which is crackers and the team has zero half backs.

Got my doubts on Chev tbh, His Focus points and messages in his interviews are baffling and it shows on the field imo.

Between now and August tge 19s hsve 2 games. Theyve played 2 in the last 7 weeks. Its crazy.