Quote Wires71="Wires71"This. Deserves it's own thread to be honest.
Our youth set up has a track record, dating back decades, of not providing players good enough for the 17. It's a simple as that. It needs a complete drains up review.
The typical process is this .
1) Player shows a bit of promise (not world beater by any means) but those who follow the academy tell us to watch out for them
2) In and out of 17 as quality just not good enough
3) Loaned out to Rochdale etc to get game time
4) Transferred to Widnes/Salford or below.
Few exceptions. Dwyer to Leeds and Philbin looks like he may be good enough.
I am afraid Toby King, George King and Declan Patton will all be going the same way as Evans, Williams, O'Brien, Laithwaite, Wilde, Ormsby, Glen Riley, Blythe (#1), ....'"
Usually these players get excuses made for them on here, the story is always "would have been a great, but was treated appallingly (ie dropped for a series of indifferent performances) and then lost his confidence". Then there will be some false comparison like look at George Williams at Wigan, he didn't become a world beater overnight and they persevered with him, just think if our lads had come through at a club like Wigan or Leeds, how great would they have been...
Most of our Academy products would never have got the number of games that they got with us, had they been at Wigan or Leeds, they would not have been able to get away with ordinary performances as some other young lad would have come in their place and then been better and locked them out of the team.
It's actually the other way round. Matty Russell came through at Wigan and they binned him after a couple of games, and it was us who has been giving him game after game to give him experience of first team SL so he can develop and make it etc.
Patton will get dropped and there will be moaning on here about how badly he's being treated, and then the team will keep losing without him and while he's out of the team his reputation will be rehabilitated as the potential saviour of Warrington, if only Price was willing to give him a shot and not persevere with Roberts and K Brown just because they are on bigger salaries etc.