Quote: roofaldo2 "To be fair, there seems to have been a lot of off-field neglect in many areas from the club for the last few years. All of which seems to have in it's own way contributed to our current standing'"
Despite sterling efforts from Paul Medley and Richard Tunningley, the youth structure was neglected by previous regimes. We lost promising players and found it increasingly difficult to attract youngsters to the club. Remember the reports that the club was considering vacating Tong. There was a lot of short term crisis thinking.
The appointment of John Bastian was a statement of intent that developing our own players was a key part of the new management's long term plan. I understand that Jimmy Lowes was very much involved in firstly identifying this need and secondly in the recruitment of Bastian. As Bullseye has said, our head of youth had a superb track record at Leeds and Wire. Thie club reinforced their determination by building a strong group of coaches and staff( eg. Matt Diskin and Leigh Beattie) in the youth set up.
Speaking personally this development was the key issue in persuading me that Marc Green was serious when he said he was " in it for the long haul".
Our youngsters still compete against Super Leagus clubs, we have much stronger links with local community clubs and the youth structure is rated by the RFL as better than many SL clubs . We are now finding recruitment of youngsters much easier than a few years ago.
We can help the club by going along to watch our U16's and U19's - and of course diehard fans could always become members of BullBuilder and help to provide those important extras that might just make the difference in recruitment and retention.
