well said

This is a good point. I think there are 2 separate issues, the quality of our young players and the fact that every good squad needs some fringe players and there are certain characteristics you want in those players too.

Fringe players are never going to be elite talents, if they are they will sign somewhere else if they aren't regulars, but ideally you want them to be versatile so they can cover various positions, be consistent performers rather than boom / bust types, and be low-ego players who will knuckle down and not rock the boat if they aren't getting in a winning side. If they have come from your academy and stay around for a long time and give you consistency, great. If you have a revolving door of signings who are fringe players at other clubs, spend a bit of time with us before moving on somewhere else (as we have done since the later TS era), not so good.

On the issue of young players not being good enough / getting more chances than they would at other clubs I think the difference between us and the likes of Wigan is just the volume coming through. They always have young players pressing for places in their team, so when their Academy players break out in the first team, it's not long before they have the next generation underneath them pushing them hard for places. If someone from the next generation is better than them, they get pushed out and moved on to clubs like Warrington.

With us, where there is less talent coming through, players are more likely to break out in to the first team and then be able to survive a lengthy time of plateauing or going backwards than they would at Wigan because we haven't got enough talent from the next generation pressing them. Rhys Evans and Dec Patton would have felt pressure from below sooner if they'd been at Wigan.

Interesting point here. It's been a while since we lost players against our wishes to a club perceived to be bigger than us/offer better prospects.

Probably the last one was Mike Cooper going to St George-Illawarra, but the NRL is slightly different as even the top UK clubs can't resist NRL clubs.

Who was the last Warrington player who got poached upwards in the Super League food chain? Fozzard going to Saints in 2004, and Toa going to Hull in 2001, are the last ones I can think of?

The last home grown player we lost? Sculthorpe going to Saints in 98?

Didn’t realise I would have to use an emoji on that post!

OBrien to Salford. If we are defining food chain in terms of league places.

I dont think it can come down to just volume and statistics as you would expect us to have a n% of star players come through the youth setup when compared with wigan where n represents the volume disparity. Maybe list our home grown international players over the last 30 years then compare with Wigan.

Currie and Mike Greg do not count. How many do we have?

Why do Currie and Mike Greg not count?

Quote: Boss Hog "Why do Currie and Mike Greg not count?'" Currie came through the Wigan system, signed when he was 18. https://www.wiganwarriors.com/news/2010 ... -close-win Mike Greg signed pro at 18 direct from Wigan St Pats and into the 1st team in 1982 aged 18. I am asking which player have we had go through our youth set up start to finish and achieve international honours. I can think of Mike Cooper who was on our books from 11.

Quote: Boss Hog "Why do Currie and Mike Greg not count?'" Currie came through the Wigan system, signed when he was 18. https://www.wiganwarriors.com/news/2010 ... -close-win Mike Greg signed pro at 18 direct from Wigan St Pats and into the 1st team in 1982 aged 18. I am asking which player have we had go through our youth set up start to finish and achieve international honours. I can think of Mike Cooper who was on our books from 11.

Yeah it all depends. If we go on recent league placing then Salford could argue to be higher up the food chain in 2019. If we ignore league places and go on honours/success then Leeds would be higher up the food chain bringing Dwyer into the question. Myler does not count as he left Warrington to go to Catalans who could not reasonably be counted as higher up the food chain.

I think arguing too much about who was produced by where is missing the bigger picture. It's having access to quality players from your youth system. If you sign a player aged 18 from another team's youth system and he goes on to be a great player you get the benefit, they don't. It's like when people get stressed about whether a player was born in Warrington or Wigan or if he was born in Newton-le-Willows does this count as home grown or not. Arsenal picked up Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona as a 15 year old and they got the benefit of him for a while so anyone meeting the Fabregas criteria counts as home grown.

So unlike Wires71 I count Mike Gregory and Ben Currie as home grown for this purpose, but his point is still right. How many in the past 30 years? Basically the only decent players with any longevity are Paul Wood and Chris Riley and even they aren't international class. Ben Currie had about 18 months as a top player and then since injury he hasn't been the same.

Also its not just about comparing us to Wigan, Saints and Leeds who are ahead of everyone, but compare us to Wakefield, Castleford, Hull, Salford. We're behind all of them too. And for years we've been hearing about how promising our future is with all this talent stacked up in the teenage age groups and none of them ever go on to do anything, including with other clubs. If we were producing lots of talent that we were releasing and they were going on to join other clubs and become top players then we could say the problem was in bringing talent in to the first team, but it's not, it's not having the talent coming through.

Basically, if you have a young player coming through who looks like a great talent and you really want to keep them, but you are unable to keep them because another club can offer them more money/opportunities to win things, then it's a food chain situation.

Harris, Sculthorpe, Kohe-Love, Fozzard were all players we wanted to keep but we weren't as good a prospect as the clubs chasing them at the time.

Myler and Dwyer were more players that for salary cap reasons or whatever we allowed to move on. Similar to when Mark Hilton signed for Wigan after we released him following him breaking his arm.

Or looking at players coming to us: Westwood, Atkins, Myler, Ratchford were players coming up the food chain. Briers wasn't, he was allowed to leave to get more first team action with us like GOB moving to Salford.

I can't be doing with Emoji's, so my reply would still be the same, but if I've missed your point CH, then what was it?

It would be great to unearth the likes of Sculthorpe (Paul, not Danny) or Harris again, yet I'd hate to think of us selling them off. However, there's a few from Bradford who wished they hadn't bought Harris.