Walsh has had a handful of games. It still seems like the only player to go straight from our academy to first team success elsewhere is Ryan Atkins. Mark Flanagan languished in Wigan's reserves for another couple of seasons before breaking through.

You can draw one of two conclusions. Either the players failed to make it because the club failed to give them the right coaching and experience at the right time...

...or the club got it right, and the players weren't going to make it anyway

Indeed. It's utter p!sh.

Nail head.

Or you can draw the opposite conclusion: you make your choice. I genuinely don't know. You could put someone like Jamie Peacock up against that - someone who seemed to be at the back of the queue for training & opportunity at that age who came through anyway, and with a vengeance - but perhaps he's just an exceptional individual (we know that anyway).

My uninformed opinion is that if a player is going to make it, he will. If he's put off by this sort of setback, it probably shows that he didn't have the character. But that is only an uninformed opinion, and I'm not going to pretend it's holy writ.

updated with Donaldsons Extension