Exactly. Losing Tomkins and Mossop for example is understandable if you then use that cash to keep your most promising youngsters and build for the future. I'd have expected new long term deals to be signed by the likes of Burgess and Hampshire by now tbh.

If we start to get our best youngsters picked off on top of having some of our best players picked off you get left with too many of the lads who sit in between in the bracket of 'decent players'. They won't win you trophies unfortunately so we need to be careful.

Yeh totally holds us back, 5 trophies in the last 4 years

Terrible

no

This

As has already been stated, under him some of our talented younger players cemented first team places.



No he didn't.

They only arrived in his 2nd season. Our view of what constitutes a world class player and a good player is obviously very different.

We had a better season in 2010 under Maguire before we brought in Finch, Hoffman and Lima. I think we underachieved somewhat in 2011, yes it was great to get the win at Wembley and end our CC drought, but the effort it took to get there was a complete detriment to how we performed at the business end of the SL season.

Id say that Hoffman was pretty close to world class but no t'other 2

Hoffman is the current unsung hero of the NSW team imo. He's definitely a top draw player but there's still a few ahead of him as well.

In regards to the OP I really can't decide. On the one hand you how can a system that produces so much talent ever be a hindrance?

Then on the other hand if a insular approach is taken you can miss out on other talented lads.

I will say two things however:

1- I'd hate to see a day come where we close up shop and don't go for the big names. I'm 100% sure that some of our fans would like this but for me watching guys like Inga, Offiah, Renouf, Lam, Dallas, Hoffma, Piggy etc is an equal part of what makes our club great.

2- I don't think playeys should be developed in our first team. Players, outside of injuries, should only appear in the senior side when they are 100% ready. I don't want to see guys finding thier feet at this level in the side. They should be sent on loan to get that experience like Charnley was. The WRLFC first team should a place for the best of the best.

I'd say to be world class you need to be one of the three best in the world at your position (so 27 world class players total), otherwise it's far too broad a phrase to actually mean anything, particularly when it gets applied to players who don't even get picked for their national team. Lockers and Roby and probably the only players in SL I'd currently refer to as 'World Class', Peacock and Morley as well when they were younger. Don't get me wrong though Hoffman was a very good player for us. I'd probably pick him in a Wigan SL dream team

In reply to the OP about the youth system holding us back.
I've just been through the club's photo gallery of the first team squad and out of the first 13 - 7 are club trained. Of the first 17 - 10 are club trained and of the full squad of 25 - 14 are club trained. Joe Burgess isn't included as his number is 32.
Not been through other clubs but perhaps not too many would beat that.
Some will be around with variances but I'll bet our youth system is providing more first team players than most others.

By my reckoning the Rhinos just pip you
We have 8 club trained players in the first 13
We have 10 club trained players in the first 17
We have 14 club trained players in the first 25

We have also blooded numerous juniors into the first team this year too

I make it 20 club trained players have made an app for us this season.

Burgess
Hughes
Farrell (Liam)
Goulding
Williams
Crosby
McIllorum
Lockers
Powell
Charnley
Manfredi
Thornley
Hampshire
Sutton
Tomkins (logan)
Burke
Farrell (Connor)
Wright
Murphy
Doran

Joel Tomkins will obviously become number 21 when he plays.

52% of the appearance this season for wigan have been by Wigan trained players. That is 8.84 players out of every weeks 17 that have been trained at wigan.


I am sure someone could work it out for leeds, but for me there first 17 is (against ours)

Hardaker-Bowen
Briscoe-Charnley
Watkins-Gelling
Moon-Thornley
Hall-Burgess
Sinfield-Green
Maguire-Smith
Leuluai-Taylor
Aiton-McIllorum
Peacock-Crosby
Ablett-Farrell
Delaney-Tomkins
JJB-Lockers

Bailey-Bateman
Achurch/kirke-Flower
Burrow-Clubb/Pettbourne
+A.N.Other (singleton, sutcliffe ect.)-Williams

so that would give them a very similar number of academy trained players.