Your not dodging my questions are you Rob ?

Its ok having money fella's, but when you don’t know how to use it you’re never going to get anywhere.
Same old Warrington thinking they can buy success, it doesn’t work like that, Why don’t you try what Leeds and Saints have done? Mixing quality influential players not up there own like your lot with young talent? Ever thought that could work?
Buying your Benji Marshall’s and your Darren Lockyers is just making a total mockery out of this franchise system and will continue to ruin our international game!

Myler>Tomkins.

He looks more developed in his core skills and decision making.

Yep that's the answer: bring in more over-paid, under-performing Aussies

When honestly was the last time we brought in a highly paid Aussie that lived up to the hype and performances at previous clubs?

Rugbychick

Think of it this way? If the players you sign were any good they wouldn’t have been let go by their previous team would they? Unless a club is having money problems and have to let there top players go due to fanatical reasons, your never going to actually get the top-notch player we all want?

I don't seem to remember Langer doing anything for you? and wasnt Johns only on Loan?

Can't really count Johns - he wasn't really a signing in the way I mean, he only played a handful of games.

Langer was how many years ago? And how many Aussies have we signed since then? Although there is a lot of sentimentality towards Langer, many people think he never really found the form he'd had in Aus.

And if they are the only examples you can think of it kind of proves my point really.


Rugbychick

Paul Rauhihi was injured most of his first season but he's been good since then, last year he was the top offloading prop in SL, the year before he was third behind Moore and Cayless.

Neither of them were able to make us competitive with the best, so no.

The imports who have starred for us in recent times have tended to be lesser known names such as Kohe Love, Burns and Nat Wood. If we were to pick overseas players up we should take them from existing SL clubs and minimise the risk. For some reason our club just seems to get it wrong with NRL players, maybe with the type of player we sign or how we deal with them when they arrive. Who knows for sure?

You can't use examples of bad signings at Warrington in the past as an argument that future signings will be as bad.

When Tony Smith arrived at Leeds they probably had fans saying "no more imports please" because of Mullins, Clyde etc being expensive disappointments - but Donald, Webb and Leuluai were all amongst the best players in their positions in SL when Smith brought them in.

If you go off Warrington's track record you could make an argument against us doing anything! If we get linked with signing Paul Wellens and Lee Gilmour for next season, you could say no GB internationals please - look at what happened with Reardon and Johnson, that strategy doesn't work.

If Smith wants to fast track some Academy players into the first team you could say when was the last time we brought through an Academy player that made a big impact and won us games? Maybe our track record has proved that using players from Warrington Academy will never get us anywhere.

Fanatical reasons, fundermentalistastic.

Personally wouldnt like us to bring any aussies for 2010 , would be looking for young english talent like , burgess , westerman , myler ect but if i had to pic , would be Lyon , Marshall , Luke

That's not what I was getting at.

It's already been proven time and time again that expensive Aussie signings are not 'quick-fixes'. Warrington have had a track record of bringing in big names that, regardless of how they play, stay for a handful of years then move on or retire.

Why do Saints do so well? I think a major factor is regardless of the small changes they make each season the core of the St. Helens squad stays the same. You have the veterans: Long, Cunningham, Wellens, Gardener and, until recently: Joynt, Newlove, Sculthorpe etc etc. Even with those players retired, and the oncoming retirement of Long, Cunningham, you can see Saints bringing through the replacements and the players that will continue the legacy: James Graham, Kyle Eastmond, Roby, Wilkin...
The Aussies that are brought in are to compliment the core team, not define it and that makes them sucessful. There is no pressure, they don't have the hopes of an entire club riding on them as, everyone knows, Saints will be sucessful even if one or two Aussie signings don't play up to standard. They are not just a team of players wearing the same shirt, they are a team in the truest sense of the word.

If you look at the positions of Saints core squad: scrum half, hooker, full back... That is what we should be doing. Developing our own players in key roles. That's why I don't think bringing in Aussies is the answer. We need to be developing our own talent in key positions and imports, if needed, should be brought in to compliment those players. We put far to much emphasis on imports and what they can do for us. It's not the answer.

As you've said Sally, we've not really had a huge amount of academy players setting the first team alight recently. Maybe then, in that case, we should be looking at the coaching set up across the board. I don't profess to be an expert on Warrington RLFC, I don't know who signs academy players, but maybe changes are needed there.


Rugbychick

I agree with you to an extent, the problem is that if the talent isn't there in the first place you can't develop it. There's always people saying that we don't give players a chance and if they got the chance they would develop, but we gave Hulse, Gaskell, Mark Gleeson and Bracek lots of first team games and they never got significantly better. The Saints players like Roby and Graham have real raw talent and can develop into top players, same goes for the Leeds ones. Paul Wood turned into a top player at Warrington but the others were limited by the limits on their ability.

There's a lot of infrastructure which has been put into our junior set up, and players get all sorts of supervision and coaching, but players are only going to be as good as their potential. Talent identification is the most important thing. The good news is that the club knew this and what you said at the end of your post, about the coaching set up needing looking at across the board, has already happened. Peter Farrell (Andy's Dad) joined us from St Helens a couple of years ago as head of talent identification, and at the end of last season John Bastian came in from Leeds as Director of Youth Development. We've signed two of the top people in the junior set ups of the two clubs whos youth systems we need to be emulating.

The benefits of this won't be clear for 2 or 3 seasons yet because of the age of the players they sign up, at the start of the year we announced five junior signings aged 16