It seems that only a few of our academy products make it to a long-term Warrington position. And that’s usually the ones with absolute raw talent such as Currie.

There’s now an interesting article in the Guardian:

www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/spo ... eur_clubs/

It appears that as Head of Rugby, Tony Smith didn’t have a direct involvement with players outside the first team. This is not a ‘dig at Smith’ thread by the way just an interesting observation.

Price has put a system in place where himself, Henderson and Briers will all spend at least one night a week coaching the academy and scholarship players and instilling philosophies from the early stages. I didn’t realise that this hadn’t been going on under the previous regime, and the more I see of Price the more impressed I am. I hope he’s as good at motivating the players as he is at setting up the system.

I guess with Tony Smith and Agar living quite far away they only contributed to the first team during daytime stuff, leaving the juniors to others. Price will have a much bigger oversight of all teams operations the new way so hopefully that will beat fruit in a couple of years. I always wondered how Wigan and Leeds seemed to consistently produce solid quality juniors instead of just the odd superstar. Our juniors were making it through but never quite looked as ready to slot in. Wigan’s wing talent line is one example. When have we been able to stick a Marshall or Davies on the wing and have them score 4 tries a game despite being in a boring team?

Shirt and sponsors aside, I feel a little bit better about 2017 each week.

It seems that only a few of our academy products make it to a long-term Warrington position. And that’s usually the ones with absolute raw talent such as Currie.

There’s now an interesting article in the Guardian:

www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/spo ... eur_clubs/

It appears that as Head of Rugby, Tony Smith didn’t have a direct involvement with players outside the first team. This is not a ‘dig at Smith’ thread by the way just an interesting observation.

Price has put a system in place where himself, Henderson and Briers will all spend at least one night a week coaching the academy and scholarship players and instilling philosophies from the early stages. I didn’t realise that this hadn’t been going on under the previous regime, and the more I see of Price the more impressed I am. I hope he’s as good at motivating the players as he is at setting up the system.

I guess with Tony Smith and Agar living quite far away they only contributed to the first team during daytime stuff, leaving the juniors to others. Price will have a much bigger oversight of all teams operations the new way so hopefully that will beat fruit in a couple of years. I always wondered how Wigan and Leeds seemed to consistently produce solid quality juniors instead of just the odd superstar. Our juniors were making it through but never quite looked as ready to slot in. Wigan’s wing talent line is one example. When have we been able to stick a Marshall or Davies on the wing and have them score 4 tries a game despite being in a boring team?

Shirt and sponsors aside, I feel a little bit better about 2017 each week.