Puletua Has Been Offered New 2 Year Deal

Quote: Chris Saint "Eric Huges was in charge from 1994 for just over 2 years, was he was promoted to the role directly from the Academy? Otherwise you cannot possibly claim Cunningham was a Hughes gem seeing as he'd have come from a previous Youth set up.'"

Eric Hughes made his name coaching the reserve grades. And he was a pretty good coach at that level. But he was out of his depth higher up.

Quote: Chris Saint "Extending Huges effects through to 1998 the kind of junior players that era brought through were Chris Morley, Joey Hayes, Richard Shiel, Andy Leatham, Danny Arnold, Paul Anderson (the centre), John McAtee, Brian Capewell, Tony Stewart, Jason Johnson, Lee Briers, Alan Cross, Scott Barrow.

There are a couple of decent players and others showed promise but it is hardly a who's who of Super League talent and trophies is it, let alone International and World Class? And Hughes wasn't restricted with a paltry salary cap, or pro rugby union and football, while dominant was far less celebrity instant millionaire that it is now.

Back to the present day the fact we could concievably field a decent starting 13 entirely based from academy products suggests we are doing fairly well at prodcuing SL talent

Wellens, Foster, Armstrong, Wheeler, Makinson, Gaskell, Lomax, Graham, Roby, Clough, Ashurst, Dixon, Magennis
Throw in a bench of last season departures doing ok in SL too

Hang on a second. You're looking at Hughes' junior set-up with the benefit of hindsight whilst we have no idea what the future holds for the current crop. Not a fair comparison. At the time when Hughes' prospects emerged we thought they would all go on to have the kinds of careers we think this batch will enjoy.

Take six players as examples - Lee Briers, Keiron Cunningham, Joey Hayes, Tony Stewart, Andy Leathem & Danny Arnold. We had EVERY reason to think all six would either become international players or very good club pros. Briers when he emerged performed a minor miracle in replacing the suspended Bobby Goulding and no one had any suspicion he would be transferred to Warrington (that said, Briers HAS been a good SL player - even with his "issues"icon_wink.gif. Keiron Cunningham at a very early age looked GB material and was capable of holding his own against established players in his teens. Joey Hayes & Danny Arnold both hit the first team with a bang. Arnold racked up a whopping total of tries in his first two seasons and Joey Hayes was an international winger and looked a certainty for years. Stewart seemed like a classy prospect on the wing and Leathem was the kind of prop we could bank on for a decade.

At THAT time there was no suggestion that Stewart (transferred), Hayes (career-ending injury), Leathem (career-ending injury), Arnold (attitude problems) & Briers would bomb out for us.

Just as we have no reason to think the current crop might self-destruct. But it can happen. Whilst we think this batch will go on to form a great new generation they might go the same way. And again, I have to stress that Hughes had NONE of the advantages Mike Rush & co have. Under McManus we have taken junior development far more seriously (we have no choice) whereas Hughes was operating on a shoe-string budget.

P.S. I forgot to add Prescott to the list.