Well said. It doesn't pay imo to over hype a young player (see Westerman) so a bit of balance is welcome imho.

Just to be clear, when I say 'previous regime,' I'm talking about coaching, not the owner or CEO; as far as I understand it, there was a serious disconnect between youth and 1st team set-ups in the past that damaged the progression of young players through to 1st team.

Fair enough but I don't think Agar has been as brave as he could have been though clearly far more open minded than Hull fans would have you believe.

Didn't our youth setup win some kind of award not too long ago.

They won the championship, however that was at some cost as many believe we held the players back a year in order to have an edge, as I recall.
Either the way the number of players going on from that squad to get SL opportunities is low - for what ever reason.

I think it was the Rugby League 9's you were talking about?

I think you might be thinking of the Community department that were put up as some kind of example for other clubs to follow

Seem to remember that our youth set-up/structure was billed as one of the best not long back too. And other clubs were encouraged to follow suit? Sure I read this in league express some time back.

The trouble is a young player can look like being a blinding prospect at an early stage and not go any further.I remember years back we had a certain player in our colts side who looked like the real deal and went on to play for the Great Britain colts alas things went no further and he ended up playing for Doncaster when they were at the bottom.He played centre for the colts and when he was at donny he ended up playing prop any one remember David Noble.

Noble is the record points scorer for Donny scoring 1751 point In a 16 year career in south Yorkshire.

He played prop in the very last period of that time.

Mark Endersby is probably a better example of genuine youth talent that ever made the transition into first grade from that time

I know you might want to emphasise the point you're making - but posting 4 times is a taking it a bit far !!!!

iPad stutter....ooops

Didn't Noble score lots of points for........oh wait, has that been said before?

Anyway, we will always have this issue, as said above, 19 year old super stars are not always open age super stars.
Saying that, the likes of Edwards, Farrell, Tomkins who were all spotted early, were well coached at amateur and pro with Wigan (not the only example of course) and took full advantage of their talents.
I'm not sure we do that but there is a lot of infrastructure needed to be able to do that....including a team around them that can protect them through that early period.
Edwards was an easy spot as he was captain of both RU and RL England team but Tomkins had to work hard to get his chance, but when he got it the right people were able to bring it out of him.

I don't know, so I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking our setup isn't as good as that, certainly in at least some areas if not all.
I'd love to have a club that the best youth were drawn to because of our setup, but if that isn't matched with a profitable club we will just lose them anyway so may not be worth the investment until later in our building process.

The Billy Conway, Garry Spencer era of colts were outstanding with Trevor Bailey, but only a few made it to regular top flight rugby and in my opinion, the best prospects were the half backs, Moules and Green and neither made it. Who can say if they would have done elsewhere.
I reckon Billy would have played for England if he'd been at Wigan like Martin Dermott.