In the 1990s, I think flinging money at it was what we were doing. I remember going to one of those old Squadbuilder meetings at Snookers where Paul Darbyshire was telling the story of the 1990s where we paid huge sign on fees to young lads, some of whom never even played for the Academy, and were just trying to get enough talent in our books that out of that pool, some of them would be good. This contributed to our financial problems later in the decade.

But also I wonder if those guys all maximised their talent. Sculthorpe and Harris did but they left us. Hilton considering he had problems through injury had a good career. Penny and Roper were bright young talents but never went on to get past the level of average SL players. The same happened with Pickersgill, Noone and Mark Gleeson. I wonder whether in a different environment they could have got to a higher level, or whether they just weren't actually as good as we hoped.

We had a great talent scout in the 90s. I'm sure it's true that we offered big sign-off fees to beat off the competition, but we still needed to spot that talent. That's why I'm glad we've gone for Pete Riding in the new setup, his record speaks for itself so let's hope it pays dividends. It certainly helps that we are now a big club and young players aspire to sign for us and the chance of competing at the top - I'm almost certain Harris and Sculthorpe wouldn't have left the club in it's current incarnation.

Regarding those who never achieved what we expected of them:

Lee Penny - amazing young talent who would have been a superstar at Wigan or Saints. Succumbed to the beer culture at Warrington and ended up overweight and butter-fingered.

Jon Roper - Massive potential but poor attitude and poor coaching meant he never developed and spat his dummy out when things didn't work out for him.

Pickersgill, Noone and Gleeson - not sure they really had any star factor about them anyway. Probably would have developed in better teams, but never in the class of Harris, Sculthorpe, Penny and Roper.

If Penny had come through at Wigan or Saints, he would have been competing with either Radlinski or Steve Prescott coming through at the same time. I expect he would have been back up for a while, played a handful of games and then got moved on to another club.

Wasn't A Johns on a £40k short term contract....effectively in the end on £13.3k a game?

Probably didn’t make my point very well, but what I meant was that had Penny come through a more professional set-up at the time, he would have flourished. He’s obviously not close to the level of Radlinski, but with the greatest respect to Steve Prescott RIP, I think Penny had the greater raw talent. Both Penny and Prescott came through at the same time, and in the 92-93 and 93-94 seasons Penny was the better player. He had pace, a fantastic sidestep, made great try-saving tackles and was good under the high ball. Once Eric Hughes established that champagne Saints side in 94-95 though, Prescott really came into his own.

The best coaching in the world would not have given Lee Penny any brains which was the main reason his career was miles behind the other two listed.

Probably worth a separate thread for the academy issue but I think some really good points made....
- Players do come through in groups. This happens at junior teams too where a strong group emerge at an age group and start to bond and build.
- Warrington academy recruitment has been patchy. They have tended in the past to recruit based on size and current levels of achievement and therefore have signed players who succeed at junior level because they have the physique of an adult playing against children. Often these players have not had to build skills and resilience because they have not had to. My suggestion - recruit based on attitude and potential
- Young players signed want to play rugby. They are used to playing often. A player who plays school rugby, club rugby and rep rugby can be playing 40 games a year, (too many). In the first year at academy most play none...(My suggestion - play u17s and u18s biased fixtures or even run outs against amateur u18s)
- The wages paid are far too little for the demands made A minimum of 4 training sessions a week, the risk of injury, loss of social life and quoting from an academy coach at a super league club "we tell you what to do - we own you" and a player can earn more working a saturday at tesco.
- Too much gym, too little skills - players in the academy still lack basic skills, and flair. But they do put on a stone of muscle a year...
-Too little fun

Its a key area...

Matthew

For me, Roberts is the best goal kicker at the club. I'm not sure who would be best to take the job next year out of Goodwin, Ratchford, Patton, Brown or Livett. Looking at who is coming in for 2019, I see issues with this facet of our game next season as I cannot see anybody at the 80% success standard.

Using St Helens as a barometer, from a similar era, compare and contrast the Wire names I've mentioned, to their 96 CCW side
Prescott
Arnold
Hammond
Pickavance
Booth
Northey
Leatham

Now, in my opinion, only Penny and Prescott are comparable in ability. The Wire lads were much better, pound for pound. Just a pity that the core of our good/great players were gone/going (Davies, Shelford, Ellis, Phillips, Bateman, Mackey), but the Saints lad's learnt alongside Perrillini, Goulding, Gibbs, Newlove, Sullivan, Cunningham.
Timing in sport means a great deal.

Anyway, back on thread. Well done to Roberts for his dead ball kicking. Great to see someone getting a high percentage of kicks.

I know very little of our new half for next season. Is he a kicker. If so, is he any good?

You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear as they say. Then if we find a pearl we need to cultivate it. Then hold on to it. I think now, in Mr Riding, one of the best and we have the £ to offer contracts and fees. Now we have Anderson who will hopefully develop the players. I think we can keep players now as we are seen as a top club. The key to long term SL success is to be able to develop truly talented young players such as Wigan and Leeds and I'm not talking about the likes of what has come through in recent years (Currie excepted), I mean top quality.

Identification
Recruitment
Development
Retention

I'd put Cunningham in the top list as he was a Saints home grown 20 year old in 1996, and you could take Hammond out as he was signed from Widnes.

But I agree that if you had a choice of our group of players coming through: Sculthorpe, Harris, Hilton, Wainwright, Roper, Penny, Knott, Stevens or theirs even with Cunningham, you would take ours.

Actually I don't think that those other Saints players really developed by learning from the big guns that Saints had. Apart from Prescott and Cunningham, those Saints lads largely disappeared. Penny, Hilton, Wainwright and Knott had better SL careers than Arnold, Pickavance, Booth, Northey and Leatham. Those Saints lads didn't learn how to be great players from the quality senior players around them, it was more like them being carried by the big guns for a season or two then getting moved on for not being up to standard. It was later on that Saints started to produce more real quality, with Wellens, Graham, Roby and Eastmond.

Karle Hammond was an odd case. I thought he looked like a real talent in his early years. He was both a playmaker and a grafter who worked hard. He got pushed out by Saints signing Sculthorpe, but he was still a good player at London Broncos. I remember us being linked with him for 2001 and thinking he'd be a good signing. But he went back to Widnes, got injured, and then disillusioned with the game.

In the early appearances Livett looked like a superb natural goal kicker. Sadly like the rest of his game it has gone off a bit. Might be worth persevering with