I've always thought the Bulls had a strong connection with West Bowling because that's where all the best kids were

To be fair not a lot wrong with that comment, they have superbly run a lot of junior sides for years. Out of interest apart from the obvious one being Elliott Whitehead and then theres your lad, how many bowling juniors are currently playing pro?

Ollie Bartle, Jay Panter, Matthew Storton and Jacob Trueman all from West Bowling in the current U19s IIRC.

The problem has always been the number of junior clubs in our area. A great success story is Keighley Albion which now has over 300 kids across all age groups. Running 2 teams at the 14's & 15's ages. 5 years ago they had less than 30 kids. John Bastian has been out to have a look 2-3 times this year already.

The u13's won the Yorkshire cup last month.

I was only pulling your leg mate

Oh I know pal

was just interested, im not surprised the bulls wanted the players at bowling as they were the best sides at the time, one of my pals was sent from hill to play in the side with Elliott Whitehead as he was in the academy with him sam burgess, etc. It wasnt a jibe back asking how many bowling juniors were in pro game mate was genuinely interested. We have finally got our act together in regards juniors hopefully we will see it come to fruition in the future.

It can be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy though. If you only scout from one team you only pick up lads from one team for your academy. Remember being connected to Queensbury U16's and went through the season winning every match in the top division and the cup. Only scout we saw all year was from Salford and that was because we were playing Saddleworth Moor in the cup. Redeverready may remember as his nephew played for them at the time I believe.

Didn't the Bulls finish all of their scouts a while back. Bit difficult if there's nobody there to do it.

That's true the club was up Dudley Hill backside so much that year was a joke trying to get John Bateman to sign were bringing all his mates to training too.