Wasn't Jon Roper shipped in from Cumbria, & Danny Bridge signed from Wigan iirc.

Now, Wigan are a club that leads the way in successful youth production & should be a template for other clubs.

well,they're not warrington born unlike that cumbrian from Dallam Jon Roper, but as far as i can recall, they were recruited at kids to play in our academy, so they came through the warrington system, of Academy, Alliance then first team.

In fact, i've mentioned this on here before, that little cluster from 94/95 that came through, hilton, scully, harris,roper, wedge and colin hodkinson, maybe lee penny but he was a bit earlier, i always thought that they came in and were very strong because of the alliance team that we had at the time. jacko (earlier) and mike gregory were in there a fair bit in that time as they were coming through, imagine being a young kid with greg leading you on the field but, not at first team level.

As much as Kevin Sinfield came through the Leeds system. All three were from Oldham I believe?

So basically in 20 years of youth development we have "produced" these GB/England internationals

Paul Sculthorpe
Iestyn Harris
Jon Roper

Don't forget Mark Hilton

THE HOOF

Hasn't Ben Harrison played for England...?

Might be adding Cooper to the list too on Saturday, he's one of 4 props in the 19 man squad so should get a game, unless they run with Westwood as a prop.

Let's be honest.
We would love to be leaders in youth development, but let's face it, we are shat at it.
May as well just keep taking Wigan bred stock.
Since Riley and Tyke, and we've shipped those out, I think we have to go back along way to see a Warrington youth development of cup winning credential.

Mark Forster is the only homegrown GB international, way back in 1988.

We never paid Leeds a penny for Morgan Smith. He was 16 and free to choose whichever club he wanted to sign for.

You will get Tingley Rhino saying we paid a fortune to Smith and Rogues saying similar in respect of Currie but in reality kids in RL get paid pea-nuts (and obviously when Kallum Watkins and Ryan Hampshire signed for Leeds and Wigan respectively it had nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of money being offered).

The likes of Joe Burgess did sign for Wigan when there was more money available elsewhere as he was a mad keen Wigan fan however as they learnt to their cost at some point everybody needs to be paid market value or they will leave to go somewhere where they will be.

There is nothing wrong with the way our youth system and facilities are set up. They are better than most clubs and I include Wigan and Leeds in that statement.

The harsh reality though is we are just not a rugby town. The amount and quality of the kids playing the game in the Warrington community clubs compared to our neighbouring towns (especially Wigan) is I am sorry to say, risible. On a wider level, schools often struggle to raise teams as well.

There is rarely a team at the top of the NW Counties Premier and winning trophies from Warrington, the last I am aware of was Latchford at U15s-U16s and that is why six players were signed from the team and all of them are still there at U19s.

If we had more quality coming in there would be more quality coming out.

Quote: Alffi_7 "Hasn't Ben Harrison played for England...? Might be adding Cooper to the list too on Saturday, he's one of 4 props in the 19 man squad so should get a game, unless they run with Westwood as a prop.'" Yes. www.englandrl.co.uk/statistics/p ... &c=England First cap 2010.

Quote: Alffi_7 "Hasn't Ben Harrison played for England...? Might be adding Cooper to the list too on Saturday, he's one of 4 props in the 19 man squad so should get a game, unless they run with Westwood as a prop.'" Yes. www.englandrl.co.uk/statistics/p ... &c=England First cap 2010.

So, is it worth investing so much in the youth setup for the meagre pickings they produce?

Perhaps our club needs to spread it's net then?

I would agree with all of that. Our problem in getting numbers of youngsters from the immediate locality means that the base of our pyramid is a lot smaller than say Wigan, hence there are fewer quality players at the top to fill our academy. That forces us to look outside the area which I suspect is much more difficult.