Have you been drinking?

Wigan have the best youth system in SL by a mile but have blocked a lot of that young talent with the likes of Tautai, Leulai, Gelling, FPN, Escare etc...

I’d love Warrington to have a team of all local British talent but the fact is that last year with only 2 overseas players in the squad we didn’t do very well. So I’ve put my all-British dream on hold until we win a couple of titles. Could be a while though.

I agree we have gone doolally like Hull, however it's clearly a quick fix the later failings of TS and Agar...Unlike Hull, Wire have a full commitment for youth and A team structures, and are the only club period spending money in tens of thousands to recruit the best of teenager talent.

Hull have a half hearted approach sharing half the effort with Rovers, who I think have been the more successful than fc in brooding talent in their area.

However Rogues, it's the successful Pie model Wire are more taken too. Wire owe much of our strong rivalry to the Wigan youth structure...and I'm fairly sure they'll be more Wigan borough prodigies in the Wire team at any one time than there will be south sea islanders....

Anyways..."(Wire)scrap the reserve team"?
Where have your seen that?

It'll be interesting to see how Duckie twists the above to mean he was telling us that Warrington are not running a reserve team this year when it becomes apparent to everyone.

What did Bridge do to warrant a sending off anyway?

Quote: rubber duckie " Anyways..."(Wire)scrap the reserve team"? Where have your seen that?'" https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/wa ... rve-teams/

Quote: rubber duckie " Anyways..."(Wire)scrap the reserve team"? Where have your seen that?'" https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/wa ... rve-teams/

Academy:

Patton
Johnson
Smith
Philbin
Cooper
G. King
T. King
Livett
Currie
Moran

English:

Ratchford
Lineham
Atkins
Russell
Hill
Clark
K. Brown
Hughes
Crosby
Prell
Westwood

overpaid antipodeans/south sea islanders:

Goodwin
Roberts
Murdoch-Masila
Akualoa
M. Brown


Struggling to see where Warrington are failing to promote English talent and youth?

Probably tried to gouge out Hock’s fingernails with his eyeball. And probably should have banned for months whilst Hock was in Manicure Rehab.

Seriously though, as much as I would like to see Warrington keep a reserve, I’m happy enough with the dual registration deal. It’s probably a slightly higher intensity and there’s not much value in playing against the same players from the same teams 5 times a season.

Since we are wealthy enough to purchase our dual reg partners what would be the difference in having them as our reserves playing in a different location, and having a reserve team in our name playing at Victoria Park? Same result but better exposure for our players and they get to mix with other players a bit more and that can only be good.

Because its weakening the Championship teams? Championship lads are missing out at the expense of a few SL Players who aren't able to force their way in. The Reserves Comp needs to be brought back.

I would also like to keep the reserves team, but only if every club in SL did the same so that it's a menaingful competition. Back in the 60, 70s, 80s every club had an 'A' team. Of course, costs were a lot lower then as players were part time, but, then again, revenue was far lower, too.

I think we need more overseas stars in SL personally.

The reserves would be 90% local academy lads though right? make them part time on a lower wage. As they start to impress they can be invited to train full time on a trail period with a bonus thrown in to cover missed work? Obviously there will be implications with that but its better than a duel reg system where 19 year old lads are expected to play for Rochdale and force their way into the team from there all whilst keeping a Rochdale lad out the team just because he hasn't got a match day squad place as of yet.

As you say duel registration could easily stop any need or desire for the lower club to take on its own young players. More players,not less, need to be encouraged to play the game at all levels.

I agree with you and MO and think that it should be a condition of SL status and taking the SKY $ that you run a reserve set up it will be a meaningful competition and may help increasing/retaining players in the game which can't be a bad thing can it?

I've not read the article, but presume it's been dropped because of a lack of opponents rather than we can't afford it or decided to throw our money at antipodeans over priced or not?

No coincidence that the recent decline in numbers of overseas stars coming over (due to exchange rate, increased salary cap in NRL etc) has been accompanied by a noticeable decline in the quality of SL.

For years people used to say cut the overseas players out and there would be tons of new top British talent coming through because they are all being blocked by the Aussies etc, but the top talent gets through anyway. All that has happened is the second tier of mediocrity gets to become regular SL players whereas in the past they would have dropped down to the lower leagues.

There have been guys who have come out of our academy in recent years who have played 40 plus SL first team games and who are rank average. Same happens at other clubs. We persist with them and claim the theory "Sam Burgess/whoever didn't set the world on fire when he first came through you need to give them more games..." but you just watch them week after week, season after season, being at best steady eddies and at worst players that just hang around filling up spots. Surely these are the players who are holding back young British talent? If there is a lot of young talent out there why not start giving it a go rather than keeping around the 'home grown' spot-blockers.

I'd like to see a quota on second rate players.

The problem is though, if we allow unlimited numbers of NRL players into Super League, we aren’t getting the likes of Jamie Lyon, Andrew Johns, Steve Renouf etc. We will be getting (mostly) second rate NRL players who struggle to commmand the huge salaries that the NRL can offer. The handful of top-quality NRL players in their prime will be at clubs who can afford it. That’s maybe 2-3 clubs. If we abandoned our salary cap you’d still only see 2-3 clubs who could afford their salary so we’d be back in the 90s with a big four full of stars hammering every other small-town club every week and causing a decline in attendances. That is of course, assuming Super League hasn’t by some miracle achieved the addition of multi-millionaire franchises like Toronto, New York and London. Unlikely we will see that anytime soon unfortunately.

I don’t think we can necessarily make things much better by abolishing the cap and abandoning youth structures, at this point in time. If we improved grass roots from the bottom up and the whole sport worked together we may see more talent but that will take a long long time.