Saints won 22-18 in Sydney this afternoon.

Well done to the boys, great start to the tour.

Great stuff.

How did Costello go at full back ? And Matty Lees at prop ?

I'm sure "The Eclipse" will post unbiased summary on here at some stage.

That's a good result for Saints' juniors isn't it?

Of course it is. I just happen to know "The Eclipse" and value his opinion on the junior game, particularly in Australia.
Saints have done very well on their previous tours over to Aus and I know they use the use them as a selling point to young players looking to join the club, and quite rightly so.

Put it one way rogues we at Saints do not throw silly money at juniors from Yorkshire.

That's Leeds and Wires prerogative. Saying that Cameron Smith is the best young player I've seen in quite a while, it'll be interesting to see how he develops.
I didn't realise Levy, Knowles, Grace and Wellington were from Bold Miners.

The truth is teams will offer kids what they think they are worth, and in most cases it's not just about money. Lewis Fairhurst for instance went to Saints because he thought it would be difficult to get in front of Williams, Hampshire and Shorrocks who were only a year or two older than him.

Wrong, but this is about Saints academy in Aus, so let's not derail the thread.

If you want to compare salaries/incentives for young players look no further than Smith and Smith.

I think he was implying Hampshire was at the time - I believe wigan even paid a transfer fee to Hull for him? 5k if I remember rightly.

The Smith brothers though topple all academy records in that respect - and didn't Leeds break the rules by signing Cameron before the rules let them? It'll be interesting to see if either of them develop into first teamers. So many academy superstars fall by the wayside ...

Sounded a good win for the Saints kids in their first outing, and a fantastic opportunity to open for Tonga v Cook Islands - all it can do is enhance our rep.

Do people think that this can lead to some of our players not returning to playing for us again? Take Levy for example, say he rips it up on the tour and leads the pack in every game, what happens if bids come in for him from Souths and Manly or whoever?

Do people think that as well as enhancing our players experience that we could also lose one or two future stars to the NRL at a young age?

It really was a great win against the odds, the players only had 3 days to acclimatise to the hot conditions and they lost Josh Eaves to injury early on when he was controlling things around the ruck.
Speaking to Matty Lees and Matt Costello after the game, they mentioned how fast the game was in tough conditions against a much bigger Tigers squad.
The Saints player who impressed me most was Kevin Brown who played on the wing, he may not be the biggest but he got stuck in, he is pretty elusive and made several pressure relieving runs.
Levy Nzoungou was strong and took some stopping, also produced a few offloads.
Rob Fairclough was a steadying influence, nice kicking game and made a couple of half breaks.
I thought Jorge Lewtas did a ton of work against much bigger opposition and never took a backward step.
The Wests Tigers had some highly rated players in their team, the fullback played for the Australian Schoolboys v NZ two weeks ago but Saints kept him quiet.

Josh Eaves broken his jaw