Quote: jakeyg95 "Yes it certainly needs time and effort. At Wakefield our academy has usually been somewhere between poor and decent and it would have been easy for us to decide to scrap it altogether and spend the money elsewhere, especially as we can't even spend the salary cap as it is. But we actually put time and effort into improving our academy and it's starting to bear fruit, with us having the current SL young player of the year in Tom Johnstone and the Albert Goldthorpe rookie of the year in Max Jowitt plus a few others starting to come through who we have very high hopes for. We've still got a good way to go but the desire is there from everyone at the club to turn our academy into a consistently successful one and everyone is aware it won't happen overnight.
So if we can do it, the poorest club in Super League, then the likes of Salford should easily be able to better anything we do if they put in the same amount of effort considering the much larger funds they have access to. But the likes of Marwan just want a quick fix and thinks "Wahhh, I've been funding our academy for a few years now and we're still not as good as Wigan or Leeds. What's the point, lets just scrap it."
It's embarrassing to read some posters trying to justify their teams not running an academy when the reality is that they're just lazy short termists who would rather let other teams do the work for them so that they can sign another 30 year old Australian.'"
In an ideal world we would all receive the rewards for our effort and investment , but as we all know that isn't always the case , it's great to see you having some success , and I hope that it continues , but as we are all aware as well , there are only so many sows ears you can turn into silk purses , you need to get your fair share of quality juniors to work with , and then you need to retain them
It's easy and simple to just say ' work harder ' , ' invest more ' , be better ' , but sometimes no matter how attractive you make yourself , or what resources you throw at it , if the raw talent isn't available to you , you will struggle to produce enough quality players
Now it seems that Leigh and Salford are considering a joint initiative , perhaps this isn't perfect and no doubt there are probably financial savings but hopefully it will be a success , as you state only time will tell