Where though? Full back? What about Ratchford

From a Wire point of view, its an educated gamble - Its a pretty open secret that Salford are after getting Ratchford back, so with a two year deal for Russell, it gives us a good chance to see if we can bring in a young British player on the (relative) cheap as a replacement.

Thats what they said about Mathers and he won back to back Challenge Cups, with some players the move to a top club gets an extra gear out of their game.

That's terrible logic. Just because he played in good sides doesn't mean he was a good player. Mathers only lasted 2 years there for good reason.

? He's been at THE top team.

This to a degree reminds me of Saints with Matty Smith.
At the time they let Matty go (by all means a more established player than Russell) as they were putting all their eggs in the Kyle Eastmond basket. And possibly Gaskell and Lomax to a degree.

Years later their 'star in the making' Eastmond ups and leaves for Union, ideally Saint could have done with Smith.

Matty Russell's future at Wigan was very much at doubt with Sam Tomkins moved to play fb, at this stage, considering Sam's age it didn't look as if Russell would ever get his chance.
Now, like Eastmond, Sam has packed his bags and we're left in a predicament which might have suited Russell and Wigan if he would have stayed with the club.

Personally I think the lad has bags of potential, ironically has a similar build, playing style to our new signing, 10 years apart it's easy to see Russell developing in a Bowen type of player.

I would have liked to have seen him back. This is a problem we have always had and will have for as long as we have a successful academy. We churn out players at such a rate that there's no way we can keep them all and plenty unfortunately will slip through the net.

Correct. He was a good player for Leeds, just lacked pace.

Mathers is a very bad example to quote. His career thus far has seen him steadily work his way down the heap.

I was speaking of Matty Russell. You need to stop thinking of Leeds as the top team Les.

What was the situation between him and Murphy. Initially everyone was raving about Russell, but it seemed to me that Murphy caught up to him and maybe even passed him in 2012, yet in 2013 Murphy certainly seems to have been passed by both Hampshire & Tierney.

either way, you cant keep them all.

It's a quite different though because where Matty Smith was offloaded to an inferior team, Russell went to the NRL. We didn't let him go because he wasn't good enough, if anything it was because he had too much potential and was lured to a better team.

Don't forget Russell wasn't on a first team contract and wasn't lured by the NRL to play for a NRL team (like Sam for example) he was in the feeder team and spent all of his time in the feeder team. I'm pretty sure Matty like Matty Smith woudn't have gone anyway if they had a first team place in their respective teams.

Point remains, it's all about timing for the clubs and the players.

Very true, but there are few, if any, that letting go has turned out to be the wrong decision (of those that have stayed in SL, at least).

This will come back to haunt us!