Agreed. You also can't legislate for those that look ordinary at an early age and then go on to be great players.

Even from a Saints point of view Whitley was in our Academy and Ashurst has gone on to forge himself a good SL career.

Welsby is probably the one that got away as it seems he was told he wasn't good enough. Maybe he wasn't that great as a junior as I've suggested above.

Hampshire looked a world beater in the academy but it didn’t work out whereas Williams absolutely hit the ground running.

From recent memory it’s only Halsall and Nicholson that may come back to bite us.

wasnt a passing comment, was having a beer with him like I do often and I asked, I remember when I posted what Micky Higham was on years ago and everyone jumped on me saying it wasnt true, gave us a laugh for a couple of weeks.....but anyway I'll let him know on Sunday hes a liar

Is it worrying we have got Leeming tied down for 4 years when it looks like O Neil is a capable super league player and can do 80 minutes?

They’ll work quite nicely as a pair I think. He’s developing really well is O’Neill but you don’t want to flog him for 80 minutes every week. He also played as much 13, as he did 9 in the academy, so I could see a scenario where him, Leeming and Smithies share minutes around (Smithies 13, Leeming 9 and O’Neill spelling between the 2). I’d have O’Neill as our starting hooker going in to 2024 though. I think he’s earning that.

was one of his best games tonight, played with his head up instead of just passing, hopefully we can carry on like that

I liked his appetite to get in to the battle with somebody like Vaughan as well. He pestered him all night and looked to get under his skin, resulting in a penalty for us when Vaughan was in possession.

Surely it's fair to say that Leeming is much more of a 'scooting' dummy-half than O'Neill (not that O'Neill never runs from dummy-half), so a point of difference between is what we want? It's what plenty of sides do, both in SL and the NRL.

Was going to comment this myself, fully agree.

I think they contrast eachother enough to compliment.