I don't think that is necessary - Rangers u16's have 11 players signed on scholarships for this coming season at Wigan, St Helens, Warrington and Salford. If there had been a scholarship programme at Leigh I know a good percentage of them would have opted to go there. The "arrangement" with Warrington does not give them any priority to pick our players for their scholarship - it may give them first glimpse of the potential but I'm sure of Leigh offered any coaching clinics they would have the same benefit.

Your subsequent posts offer good reasoning and rationale, I personally like your idea's there.

Yes, it all boils down to money, and we need to seek sponsors and business partners to bring it to fruition. Mr Ainscough was once (I believe) willing to offer support to an apprenticeship / scholarship style programme and we need more like minded people like him to buy in to it.

To be fair , I think the club recognises what needs to be done and there is currently an awful lot of work being done behind the scenes to that degree.

Seriously , would they ? , perhaps the Salford ones , I recall my own son being ' tapped ' to move to Rangers by a coach who suggested he had ' contacts ' at Wigan , not just picking on them for this but that does go on

At this minute 90% would go to Wigan,Wire or Saints before Leigh , and you know it , so would that be Leigh getting their fair share ?

Look at the last England team , how many came through the Bradford academy ? , so why did all these players sign for the Bulls rather than other local clubs ? , maybe something to do with them being SL/Challenge Cup or WCC winners at that time ?

On the Bradford site they have been desperately suggesting they must retain their academy , why ? Do they seriously think they are still going to be getting the best youngsters now they are struggling in the lower tiers ? They've not been able to hang onto them anyway , they now like us if they retain an academy will be scratching around for ' rough diamonds ' to polish , only for them to be signed up by higher grade clubs

I know for a fact that Leigh have excellent relations with Golborne and it is probably the way forward IMO.

Just a dose of realism here , we are talking SL players , players who will go on to have a full career in SL , let's say 10 years

So let's say 11 SL clubs ( we'll leave out the Catalans for this one ) each having 20 British ( English ) players on their first team squad , so that's 220 players , each with a 10 year career , so every year you need to produce just 22 players to replace the ones who retire

So if your aren't getting the very best young talent available , the odds on you producing just 1 SL quality player a year are huge

It doesn't matter which or where the clubs are Harold , Wigan recruit from all over the North of England , the issue is they will get any player 90% of the time before us , they have in the past flouted RFL rules on scholarship numbers , they want the best and they want all of them , and they get them

How you turn that round is the problem , just having an academy won't do it , there has to be bigger incentives , not just money either , and even then there is no guarantee , Leeds youngsters are currently rubbish compared to what they have produced in the past

Indeed, and quite probably coz Dereks lad plays there. I am also conscious that a number of Leigh players are going helping out at different age groups training sessions. Not to say they don't do it at other clubs also

I've not seen Purtill's job description, so cannot comment. He had his role at Rangers while still at Huddersfield. I suppose we're going to slag off Leigh Centurions for the fact that Huddersfield's assistant coach is volunteering at a particular club?

For year's there's been problems between the professional and amateur clubs in the town, but seems sacrilege to suggest there could be fault on both sides.

Incorrect assertion Neil, to the very best of my knowledge there is no connection of any sort between Leigh East and Swinton Lions other than the fact my business is a current sponsor of both clubs.

For clarity we sponsor many sporting organisations and foundations in the North West of England, Steve Prescott Foundation, Leigh RU Girls, BARLA ARLFC (Lancashire), Magull Boys Community Football club (Liverpool), Leigh Community Foundation just to name a handful off the top of my head.

As for committee resistance, I'm not on the committee at East, however the majority of the committee are Centurions supporters and there is a good relationship between the Chairman and the Centurions Board which hopefully can develop as and hopefully when a youth structure of some sorts is implemented.

Everyone I speak with at East who I engage with is fully supportive of the towns professional club.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good rumour mate eh...

Good to see that our local clubs are still producing quality players , hopefully as we have discussed on this thread at some point in the future we will see them learning their trade at our proffessional club

Took you a while to bite there Andy.