Quote: Him "At 13/14 they are talented boys, nothing more. Their development in the next few years is the real key especially given the fact of different physical maturation rates, different skill levels (which is 99% down to the quality of coaching received up to that point, sadly it's often quite poor) different emotional maturation rates, different confidence & self-esteem levels etc.
At 13/14 even the top scouts will admit it's a punt and it depends on the coaching received & how the individual reacts to that coaching plus a healthy dose of luck, be it good or bad.
This reliance upon the academy systems to teach players the skills properly (ie poor amateur coaching in a poor amateur system) is also one of a few development related reasons as to why we lag behind the Aussies.'"
Before I start let me make the point that I'm generalising about the quality of amateur coaches, there are some very good coaches in the youth amateur game but they're few and far between.
Up to the age of 13 the majority of players have poor to virtually no core skills development, this as you say is down to the poor coaching they receive at amateur clubs. The RFLs Embed the Pathway programme seeks to address this by putting amateur coaches through a rudimentary core coaching programme.
However, as things stand the better young players enter into pre-scholarship camps with awful levels of core skills right across the spectrum. Worse than that the more successful players tend to be the biggest and fastest which again as you rightly say is because of early maturation or because they're quartile 1 & 2 in terms of when they were born.
The problem here is that because they're bigger and faster the amateur coach doesn't change them or seek to develop them, instead they're satisfied with the big kid scoring 6 tries and winning the game because the coach and the parents have a winning/performance culture rather than a development culture. That means that when these bigger often more athletic players reach pre-scholarship or actual scholarship they're often the worst players in terms of core skill development.
The other side of the coin is that the smaller players often get shoved out of the way, played on the wing or don't get enough game time so their core skills are under developed as well.
Both groups, big and small, suffer a number of lads who give up the game, the smaller lads because they get too little game time, get knocked about and become disillusioned. The bigger lads have it too easy and when their peers begin catching them up in terms of size and physicality it means they can't score 6 tries a game anymore. They struggle to cope emotionally and physicaly because they can't dominate games and have the success they normally enjoy, because they've never been developed they don't have a plan 'B' and many give up playing.
Many of these young players receive core skills coaching for the first time ever when they enter scholarships with professional clubs. Every aspect of the game has to be addressed and core skills coached session after session after session in order to bring these lads up to somewhere near where they ought to be but the lost years of development can never be fully regained and that's where we really lag behind Australia.
Once in scholarships they receive dedicated, intense and expert coaching on everything from tackle technique, catch- carry - pass, evasion, PTB, defensive systems, marker play, mapping, kicking, catching etc etc etc
They also receive coaching on conditioning, physical literacy, SAQ, emotional Intelligence, diet, hydration, prehab, rehab, self analysis, goal setting and many other elements of the game that are alien to them because they've never seen it before.
This coaching goes on 2 times a week for 1 year in pre scholarship and at least 3 times a week for 2 years during scholarship. The lads are mentored, advised, reassessed, Tested, benchmarked and retested by experts during the 3 years of contact with the professional club.
When they reach the age of 16 they are all unrecognisably better players than they were at 13 when they started but unfortunately not all are good enough to become full time professional Academy players.
Also at the age of 16, unfortunately, you get the bigger clubs who have monitored the progress of these players from afar, coming in with a bigger financial offer and taking many of the players from the clubs that have invested years of time and expertise to get them where they are.
That's the nature of the beast, that's life, thats rugby league and I can live with that!
What I don't like is some poster from a big club who is obviously clueless about elite youth sports development coming out with ignorant statements that the development of the young players that leave for bigger clubs has "the square root of FZ All" to do with those who've invested so much time, money, expertise and emotion into the players in question.