Quote: Rogues Gallery "Your youth system has improved immeasurably over the last three or four years. Go back through my posts and I have been a BIG critic of the U20's for years in that it is not producing enough competition.
Last year I got a load of abuse on here for criticising the U20 system after Wire had beaten an U20 team by about 60 points. My question was then as it is now "What good did it do either team?"
Wigan have beaten Bradford tonight easily with a Bradford side that included some of their players with first team experience.
It's not Wigan or Wire fault that this is happening but it needs fixing, how I'm not sure.'"
The same problem exists at almost every level of rugby league as a consequence of the nature of the game. By its DNA it is impossible for a weaker team to go out and defend for 80 minutes and hope to sneak up the other end and score a single try to win the game. Rugby league by its nature identifies the best team and they win. The only level of rugby league where it is nigh on impossible to successfully forecast results with a decent level of success is the NRL (and my wallet will vouch for that).
So why is the NRL so competitive? Purely and simply because the talent is more evenly distributed across the competition. So why doesn’t this apply in the UK? Again purely and simply because there is insufficient talent to go around.
Here is something that you have posted on the Wigan board
Now I bet that Wigan academy team was beating all and sundry across the board and smashing others to high heaven, yet the only player listed who eventually proved to have the necessary quality to make it properly with Wigan is Hansen. So would the likes of the Ballards and Beswick have been better served playing in the Academy at another club where they would have been more likely to find a full-time professional career? Almost certainly not; the level of coaching available elsewhere would have been questionable and where good coaches were present the resources afforded them by their employers were completely in-adequate.
So nobody could blame the Ballards and Beswicks of this world in throwing their hat in at Wigan and seeing where, beyond a cabinet of academy level winning medals that took them. Also nobody could blame Wigan for hoarding the best players as there are always late developers out there somewhere and you need 17 players to field a team.
However things are improving, other clubs are now making bigger commitments to their Academy set-ups and thankfully Warrington are the major movers from no-hopers to serious contenders in this field. I expect that over the coming few seasons Warrington will make more and more in-roads when it comes to recruiting the cream of the nation’s players. For example if Joe Mellor was coming to the end of his service area age groups now Warrington would be a serious option and possibly the likely choice for him to sign with. As little as four or five years ago Wigan was always the right choice for Joe to make to better himself as a player.
There also seems like positive noises coming out from both the east and west sides of Hull whilst Leeds and Saints have been there for sometime. However the hinterlands of West Yorkshire, just as with stadia, seem content to rely upon what they already have and I fear will get seriously left behind and playing catch-up (as they are with the stadia) and no longer be able to rely upon the local, rich natural resources as the elite from those areas look to the professional set-ups offered to the west of the Pennines and Humberside.
So the u20s is not ideal at present but it is better than it was five years ago (Christ Gary Hulse and Steve Pickersgill use to be Warrington’s great white hopes). You have to hope for the good of the game overall that just as Wakefield and Castleford now realise the importance of modern stadia to the development and strength of the game and its clubs then the penny will also drop about the return to be made from investing heavily in their Academy set-ups.
In the meantime I will continue to enjoy watching Academy rugby as I’m sure yourself will Rogues, just remember don’t get too upset when Wigan lose out to Warrington in the final this season – its for the good of the game overall.
