Rumours 2

Quote: Wires71 "It's a complicated question as the development needs are at their greatest when the player is relatively young. So we might well have talented young players 16/17/18/19 and then fail to keep them progressing and that damages their career going forward. Let's use a teaching analogy, you caWn have a shining star at Primary school enter an average high school and not thrive and do so well. This will affect them long after leaving school. The development failing cannot always be addressed at a later club. Briers and Westwood came though other systems before joining us.

There has to be a reason why we have so few players come through our system and reach senior representational level over the last 20 years.'"

I agree with what you say and there may be something in terms of the margins of maximising talent but I think there are maybe 2 questions here, have reached a higher level if they'd come through at Saints/Wigan/Leeds?

2. Why hasn't Warrington produced anybody of top-level SL potential, since the mid 90s. By this I mean players of the calibre of Graham, Roby, Burrow, McGuire, Tomkins. They are a tier above the guy who I think was our best product over this period, Paul Wood. Ben Currie pre-injury showed potential to be in this tier for about 18 months but has regressed since.

For question 1, even if you argue that those players may have reached a higher level in those clubs' set ups, than they reached with us, would they have actually been able to outcompete their peers at those clubs? Eg Kevin Penny came through with us, went on a bad run of form and was dropped and people said the club should have stuck by him. If he'd have come through in Leeds, he'd have had a young Ryan Hall pushing him. Would Leeds have persevered with Penny longer than we did, or would they have taken a look at Hall? Mostly likely Hall would have just locked down that spot as soon as Penny struggled. It's a similar story for all of those Wire academy products - can you think of any of them who you honestly think would have outcompeted their peers of a similar age group and locked down a spot long term. I just don't think they were in the same talent range.

The reason I brought up Briers and Westwood as examples that show the issue isn't just about substandard coaching, is that both of those were players with question marks and a lot of raw edges when we signed them. By no means were those slam dunk inevitable successes. When we signed Briers as a replacement for Harris I don't think any of us realistically thought Briers would end up being a better player than Harris was. Compare the 19 year old Briers who Darryl brought in to the team, to the 17 year old Harris who Johnson brought in, and Briers was way more rough and needed a lot more work. Westwood seemed like a big lad with a good attitude that didn't really have any obvious outstanding potential: rather slow and flat-footed and made some brain fart decisions. But if we want to see impact of coaching look at say how those two came on under Paul Cullen. They got an identity and role in the team that worked for them and Cullen polished off a lot of the rough edges to their game to the point they were class acts.