We are not miles behind Wigan, Saints and Leeds, if the metric is percentage of players that come through in to the first team, or that get a good number of games.

If the metric is, percentage of real top class players - good enough to be difference makers in Grand Finals, like Sinfield, Burrow, McGuire, O'Loughlin, Roby, Graham etc, then we are light years behind them.

Also for a few years now I've heard people talk about these lads from Rylands that got signed up by St Helens. Who were they, did any of them have good careers with Saints? Would be interesting to see how different their experience was with Saints compared to if they'd signed for us...did Saints show more patience with them? Better coaching to develop them into top players?

I'm fairly sure that our resident WA9'er will inform us that they're currently on the way to winning several GF's, as Saints youth policy (like anything else they do) is far superior to ours.

I remember when TS was coach, and we were pretty sure of getting a playoff spot, he would sometimes rotate the squad and rest a few first teamers to play some young Academy players. The reaction on here was always "well if the club is going to pick and choose their games I'm going to pick and choose what games I go to watch..."

Its the same as would happen every year when the team line up was published for the Boxing Day or New Years' pre season games. It would mostly be Academy players, and people were like "£15 to watch the Academy? forget it". The fans just wanted to see our new Aussie signings get a run out, they didn't want to watch these local teenagers.

We saw it when Price played Ashton over Ratchford....outrage on here! Ratchford was apparently our greatest ever SL signing and Price dared put a lad who'd signed from Swinton, at fullback ahead of him.

The only measure of success we need to worry about wrt our Academy is the number that are playing on a regular basis for the club. At the moment it is 4, King, Currie, Cooper and Philbin, and that is miles behind Saints and Wigan.

That's a fair point, Damned if you do and damned if you don't so to speak.

Absolutely, a balancing act that is nigh on impossible to get right.

The only measure of success is whether we win the Grand Final. Any club can roll out its Academy players in the first team, it doesn't make it a success if they win feck all.

If we were fielding this all-home grown starting 13 in 2021, where do you think it would finish in SL? Would this be proof that our Academy was better than Wigans or Saints?

Gareth O'Brien
Rhys Williams
Toby King
Rhys Evans
Gene Ormsby
Riley Dean
Dec Patton
Mike Cooper (c)
Brad Dwyer
Ben Evans
Joe Philbin
Ben Currie
Harvey Livett

It's more like damned if you lose and praised if you win.

Why did Sir Alex Ferguson get so much praise for bringing through young players at United in the 1990s, but Dave O'Leary never got the same praise for doing that at both Leeds and Villa?

Is it not so much a failure to produce good quality players, but more effectively managing their transition into Superleague? We have had several ‘bright young stars’ come through and then a season or two later they’re on their way out.

Maybe playing a full strength team should be saved for big derby games and there should always be two or three young ones in the seventeen.

You misunderstand me. I am saying we only have four players in the squad that have come from the Academy that are of the right quality, the rest that were given opportunities have gone as they were simply not good enough. Perhaps I should have worded my post differently, particularly as the likes of Dec Patton has played over 100 games for us now.

So I am saying we need at least 8-9 players of the Currie, Philbin, King, Cooper quality in order to match the likes of Wigan and Saints. That is the gap that needs to be filled, and it's a big one.

I don't think so. A new academy player coming in still needs to lift his game to SL standard so they are simply falling at the last hurdle. Most of them will kick on to some extent and get games in the hope / expectation of improving further. If the coaching staff had failed then you would expect that some of our rejects would be picked up by other clubs and brought to SL standard, but I can't really think of many examples over the last 10 years or so ( possibly GOB ?). It will be interesting to see what happens to Harvey Livett. He probably falls into this category and played just under 50 games for us. But he was loaned to HKR this year and has now been released with rumours that he will be picked up by Salford.