Quote: giwildgo "They might not be quality for a few seasons, but they'll develop given chance. This idealistic desire for quality players across the park is not realistic, the standard of available players in SL is poor and we can no longer compete for imports. Like it or not the best way is to develop our own, we'll lose a few given the SC but will be better off than most. Given the number and profile of departures this off season it looks very much like a transition phase for a year or two. Why would Hock want to stick around while Green and Smith keep the halves warm until the next generation come through. Maybe it's time to give the likes of Hughes and Lloyd the opportunities and see how they go, we might be pleasantly surprised.'"
I have no issue with how good those 2 could become, they have massive potential but they're so far behind a player like Gareth Hock at the moment it's hardly worth mentioning them as a realistic replacement(and thats nothing against them as it's totally understanable).
The issue I mainly have with lads like those is that for all the potential they have I worry that they'll not quite fulfill it because of the situation we're starting to find ourselves in. Throw a lad like Rhodri Lloyd in to a Wigan side playing full of confidence with world class players like Sam Tomkins, Tommy Leuluai, Gareth Hock etc around him and he'll just be able to concentrate on doing the basics whilst building his confidence up to progress his game. Throw him in to a Wigan side stripped of it's best players playing with pressure from the stands and low on confidence and he then has huge worries, huge pressures and he won't have that bedding in period to build up his own confidence and game.
We've seen it happen in the past around 2004-2006 ish where we had some great young players like Kevin Brown and Luke Robinson coming through and they showed amazing potential but that potential was lost because they didn't have sufficient quality around them and lost players who would lead them about the place and help them improve. Their Wigan careers crashed and burned under huge expectation and pressure and it was unfair.
Those 2 players are just a quick example of what can happen. They've gone on to have decent careers but nowhere near as good a careers as they could have had and that's the problem we face now with the next batch of kids we have coming through.
