Quote Bully_Boxer="Bully_Boxer"Excellent post IMO and quite similar to some conversations I have had today'"
I'm not sure I agree.
Being a leeds fan i've seen a first hand a large number of youngsters come into the team and then become champion players.
Chev walker and JJB made their debuts in 99, they must have been 16/17 at the time.
At the turn of the millenium leeds had to play a massive amount of youngsters all at once because of injuries. I remember in 2001 we were playing hull at home, we had a mediocre team, our coach was about to be sacked, and we had loads of injuries.
This little midget came on, i'd never seen a player so small and straight away he jinked through the defence and sped round the fullback to score a try and then he floated over a touchlline coversion - no problem, i remember thinking ''who the f*ck is this kid?''
The point is these were hardly ideal conditions or environment for youngsters to come into, but they either sink or swim, if they're good enough they'll always swim.
Look at tomkins at wigan, get's his chance (allbeit through injury) and WHAM!
If smith hadn't been injured tomkins wouldn't be scoring a hatrick for england. He'd still just be some youngster on the fringes.
You need to blood the younsgsters.
). But with our juniors becoming ever more important its vital, absolutley critical, that we dont stuff up their development by for example rushing them into the team. And so signings like this are needed, however unpopular, to help the entire squad function for the [iwhole [/iof next year and looking into 2011.
