Dougie Charnock

Got this off the Wire forum.
Off the field weve come a long,long way.Well done Saints.

Quote: sport crazy "Matt Wood has played rugby for the last two years as a winger. With his club side, which has included Dougie for both of the seasons and Cal for one, he's won every piece of silverware availabvle -2 premiership titles, 2 NWC cups, a Lancahsire cup and the National cup.

He's proudly represented Warrington at Service area for each of those years but has never been offered a scholarship until now.
He was offerd a scholarship at Warrington which he and his family, wanted, were absolutely delight at and were in the process of accepting.

Matts great grandad played for Warrington, the family are all season ticket holders, want him to play for Warrington and are proud Warringtonians.
Saints in the meantime made contact also offering a scholarship, they were told what the situation was with Warrington in that Matt was going to accept their offer but still invited him down to the club.

Matt went to Saints with his family where they had a two hour long meeting during which they were given great detail of the scholarship programme, the setup at Saints and how they will develop Matt - at the end nobody could think of a single question to ask because everything had been covered so thoroughly. The family came out of the meeting highly impressed with Saints - with the overall thought that their scholarship is a well established proven programme, with experienced coaches that have been at the club for a number of years, it has produced first team players and most importantly Matt thought it would be right for him.

We stepped away from it all for a few days, spoke to a lot of people, had a lot of sleepless nights but decided that at this time Saints are the right club for Matt to develop any potential he has. Matts club coach, who has connections at Saints, never got involved or influenced any decision.

One of the considerations with Matt was to take him out of his 'comfort zone' at Warrington and put him in a new enviroment at Saints which he doesn't know with people he doesn't know. This is not only to develop him with his rugby but long term as a person as we know very few lads make the grade.

The hardest things I had to do was tell Warrington that Matt wasn't excepting their offer, in particular Peter Farrell, who scouted Matt, as he has been an absolutetly superb professional gentleman with Matt and the family.

Warrington are in the process of changing with some excellent staff working very hard to make it work. They have got both established and new local lads on the scholarship, who are exciting prospects.'"