How much have you seen of Bateman, and which players do you think are better?

C'mon, I saw Rhys Evans at the U20s on Saturday and he was showing most of his underpants. I was fairly outrageous at that age as well. Cut them a bit of slack. These lads are still kids. Currie is not 18 yet.I think Bateman is 18. To be playing at SL level is really impressive. The big issue is whether or not they continue to develop. Personally I like Bateman, he is aggressive and fearless taking the ball forward. He did look a bit knackered on Saturday and I wondered how many games he had been played by Bradford.

My doubts are about the forward positions that we need. We have loads of 2nd rowers in the squad and coming through, but surely it's the front row we need to plug with Morely close to retirement, Carvell on the wane and Wood ageing ???

Thoughts ??

Rogues in denial of our youth development shocker!

Thought Carvell was outstanding yesterday to be honest,every player goes through a dip in form,moz will be back soon and woody is doing ok since the daft offloads have stopped.

Bloody Murder that Tony Smith for telling them to keep the ball alive and play entertaining rugby!!!

Yes, I thought Carvell was impressive as well. However those three players are all 31/32 and coming towards the end of their careers. I would like to see a couple of 25 / 26 year old props in the squad.

Mike Cooper, Ben Harrison? Both around 23 years old. Both played well yesterday.

plus Chris Hill

we also have some top quality young props coming through

Glenn Riley (currently on dual reg at Swinton), Ben Evans, Brooke Broughton are all full time plus others in the 20s like Ryan Duffy and Jack Morrison. We have an abundance of quality front rowers coming through (I am not for one minute saying they are all in the class of Morley, Carvell and Wood yet).

I actually agree with the point you're making. A lot of our fans will have their decisions finalised after watching Bateman in one game. Yesterday was the first time I'd really seen him, I thought he looked good for a teenager and held his own amongst some of the league's best 'men'.

For me, I will usually listen to the opposition fans more than my own when it comes to opposition players. The Bradford fans have raved about Bateman which for me says more than one game. I remember some of our fans saying Ratchford was an average centre with suspect defence, he comes here, plays full back and all is forgotten.

Bateman certainly has publicity from the forums etc. but we have a tendancy to over hype players after a handful of games. I remember Rhys Evans being asked about a potential England career after either his debut or 2nd or 3rd game.

It doesn't make them bad players it just sets huge expectation to early in their career

How?
It was a sensible question. I rate Bateman highly from the times I have seen him, and I was interested too see which players the poster thought were better in the Wire academy systems.
Ben Currie does look good, but at this moment I would put him behind Bateman mainly because Bateman has had more exposure at the top level.

Style under Cullen was safe and down the middle(Boring to be Honest) since Smith came in he instilled a new lease of Life in certain players,Woody being one of them.He has never been known for his offloading ability and was one of the worst culprits for losing the ball trying to offload or Knock ons. Since he has gone back to basics he has become the work horse he is.I love the Offloading that Smith has brought into our game and its very Entertaining,but lets get out of our own Half first.

From the limited number of times I have seen the two players, Currie seems to be the stronger runner when given a bit of space. However he doesn't (as yet ) make much impression taking the ball forward, whereas Bateman looks strong and aggressive with the attitude to match. Very early days for both players I suppose.

Cullen played safe?

Not sure how you got that opinion of Cullens coaching style.

We played some outstanding attacking rugby under him, when we initially moved to the Halliwell Jones he purposely asked for the pitch to be as wide as the rules would allow.

We may have under achieved under him towards the end but we didn't play boring rugby up the middle.