Matty Nicholson CONFIRMED: three and half year deal

Quote: sally cinnamon "What always makes me laugh about the debate about young players on here is that it is the same every year.

You could go back 20 years and hear about how Steve Anderson was doing great things behind the scenes with our youth system and how DVDV had set up the scholarship with William Beamont and how it would bear fruit over the next few years.

There's always some story about how England Academy has more Warrington players than Wigan or Saints or whatever and what a great generation we have got coming through.

Then no superstars come through and we get told that actually those players had the talent, it was just that they didn't get their chance in the first team. And yet we've had lots of rank average home grown players come through and play 50 odd first team games before being moved on and spending the rest of their careers at lower SL teams or lower leagues. And none of the supposed top talents who weren't getting a chance with us ever seem to get picked up by other SL clubs and given a chance there.

The explanation is invariably "poor coaching" where these players were 'ruined' by Cullen / TS / Price. Well Powell seemed to do OK in terms of developing players in the first team at Leeds over 2001 to 2003 so that argument is going to be harder to use going forwards.'"

Not so sure things will be the same going forward though. As the old saying goes: ‘Don't expect different results by doing the same thing over and over again’… I think we’re under no illusions that we are NOT doing the same thing this time around. That doesn’t mean there’s proof it’s going to pay dividends, but it’s certainly not the same set of ingredients as in the previous two decades.