I don't know about the virus bit, but the rest I totally agree with. Ben Currie at the end of last season was a huge promising talent I was looking forward to seeing, but has unfortunately not shown that promise for me yet. He has spells within games where his defence is immense and I am one of the loudest applauders of this, but there are also times when he goes missing. He was 100% at fault for the opening Hull KR try leaving a huge gaping hole in our defence and sometimes his runs leave a lot to be desired.

That being said, I bow down before the mastery of his quick thinking for the rapid 20 metre restart that led to Kevin Penny's try against Doncaster in the cup. True class.

He definitely had a virus and lost a load of weight, it set him back massively and also knocked the confidence out of him, that came from one of the U19 coaches who said they all think Currie will be a top player for years to come.

Why is it all our players have potential and when Wigan or Saints play a youngster they show their potential straight away?
We have had numerous players with potential and very few have made it.
Are we unable to spot talent or do we not know how to develop it

That is a very good question.

When I watch the U19/U20's play I am always very impressed with their organisation, tackling, positioning etc. They look really well schooled to the extent that when the first team have a poor game, their 'basic' skills can look at lot worse.
So here is a suggestion; Perhaps we take a lot of middling ability youngsters and school them extremely well (I think the U19/20's have been in the top four in the league for the past 3-4 seasons now). But a lot of these kids may have limited headroom to improve, it's simply that we make the very best of their potential. The other top junior clubs are Wigan, Leeds and Saints. Certainly the first two of these have a much bigger pool of talent on their doorstep and hence a much better chance of finding a top class player. And from a pool of say 25 U19's, you only need two 'first team' players to come through each year to maintain a very good side (with the rest from imports). If you look at our record over the past 10 years (for which I have the data), we had 24 youngsters making a SL debut, but only three have made it to become first team fixtures; Harrison, Riley and Mike Cooper.

And are there any that have gone on to be regular first team players for other teams, Winslade's? Or have the other 21 all disappeared into obscurity?

I can not recall any I am afraid. We lost Matty Blythe of course, but that was a 'release', as was Adam Neal, who then wen't to Salford and Lee Mitchell to Cas. I think only Matty is still playing first grade football now. Tyke and Rhys Williams are in Oz but with feeder clubs.

Ben Currie played U16's for Wigan, before we pinched him.

What ever happened to Alex Thompson?

Pickersgill?

If there were examples of Warrington Academy players that didn't make it with us but went on to be top players with other clubs then I would say our problem was developing and using our talent, but there isn't.

We don't seem to really have much talent coming through. Since Harris and Sculthorpe basically there have been four players who have gone on and really made it: Wood, Riley, Harrison and Cooper. All good enough to win trophies and play in a top side. Ian Sibbit was also a decent player so gets an honorary mention. But given that I am thinking of Sibbit as about the fifth best player we have produced since the year 2000 says a lot about our record.

Outside of them there are a lot who have been given extended runs at first team level but never really established themselves, like Gleeson, Hulse, Noone, Pickersgill, Penny, McCarthy and co.

I can understand why we are behind the likes of Wigan, Saints and Leeds who have access to far more junior players and have been established as top producers of talent for years but it is a bit puzzling that our record compared to the likes of Hull, Cas and Wakefield does not look that good, they have produced more top players than we have. Maybe again it comes down to them having more junior clubs around and in our local area of junior clubs we are facing competition from Wigan and Saints.

Every year since I can remember there's always talk about how the future is bright and the next crop coming through the system has got some superb talent, but when was the last time you saw a really special player coming up out of our Academy...?

Beg your pardon, you are correct. I should have thought of him, he is one of their longer serving players.

Thompson now plays for Oxford.

I think developing talent for whatever sport is essentially a numbers game. For every e.g. 1,000 kids playing the sport you might get 3-4 elite sportsmen / women. This assumes that they have access to the right coaching and facilities. Yes, they have to have the correct genetic make up, but it is really a numbers game - it's a pyramid, and the bigger the base the more top flight players you get at the top. Back in 1998 Wire spent quite a lot of money to re-connect with the schools and clubs in the area. I can remember Paul Darbyshire was tasked with the job, and he said that out of 80 primary schools in the area, only 10 were playing rugby league. There must be a lot more than that now, but presumably we have paid the price for that over the last 10 years or so.

Why do wigan have a bigger pool than us, we are talking about players that are not from Warrington anyway, the like of Harrison, wood. Once we get to the acadamy structure players are signed from all over. We could say watkins came through the warrington system as he played for Latchford?. Its not about the pool its choosing the correct players and seeing the potential and developing the potential in the correct way.

We used to mine Cumbria quite a bit for talent. Rudd, Roper, Dave Elliot, Roskell, Chambers all came from that area (Kells I think) and proved to be very good players (though Ruddy never quite lived up to his considerable potential).

Don't know whether we no longer scout that area or the production line has dried up a bit but it certainly produced quite a bedrock of good amateur players who came through the ranks.

Not sure if that is sympotatic of the amateur game in general or not. Certainly watching promising young players in the A-team at Wilderspool and arguing about who would make it and who wouldn't was a wonderful way to spend a Friday evening.

its how we used to recruit, we'd identify lots of kids with potential, and throw a lot of money at them to sign with us on professional terms.

its one of the great stories Derbs told at a squadbuilder meeting many many moons ago.

kind of upsetting at the time to hear it.