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| At the moment Oz imports are too expensive, and there is a dearth of talent for sale in the UK. That seems to me that the club youth system is now much more important if we are to maintain a 'top 4' position in SL. So now that most of the angst has finished over the GF, I have been looking back over the past 7 years to see how successful we have been in bringing through youngsters to the first team. To the best of my knowledge, these are the figures;
Debut appearances for 1st team;
2006 Pickersgill, Bracek, Harrison, Penny
2007 Jerram, Mitchell, Blythe, Cooper
2008 Neal
2009 McCarthy, Thompson
2010 Evans R, Williams
2011 GOB
2012 Currie, Dwyer
2013 Laithwaite, Bridge, Riley, Evans B
(I have omitted the 2013 crop from the rest of the data because we don't know how they will turn out.)
Number currently playing SL standard
10 Players. Pickersgill, Harrison, Blythe, Cooper, Neal, McCarthy, Evan R, GOB, Currie, Dwyer
Number that established themselves in 1st team
6 Players. Harrison, Blythe, Cooper, McCarthy, Evans, Currie
So in 7 years, we have really only produced 6 players for the 1st team from our youth system. Is that good enough ? Personally, I would have thought we should be aiming for around 2 players per year. Over a 10 year period that means 20 players from a squad of 25 can be replaced, with the remainder coming from transfers.
But the bottom line, is that our close competitors Wigan and Leeds appear to be able to bring through or attract a larger number of quality younger players. There are undoubtedly very good reasons for this which we can all think of, but it doesn't affect the conclusion that in the current climate, our youth system is far more important to us than in the past, but doesn't seem to be producing the number of 1st team players that we need.
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