The funny thing is Wigan have been far more successful at producing players in positions which are absolutely crucial to winning the title (mostly the pack). Aside from Graham (and possibly Clough, who is half-back row half prop) our academy has failed miserably insofar as big men are concerned. I'm not saying Wigan are producing world beaters - but they have consistently churned out solid, grafting props which are the platform for any side with title-winning aspirations. How many quality back row forwards have Saints produced in the past twenty years. How many have Wigan produced?

If SL was decided by academy strength alone Wigan would have probably won three times as many titles. The fact that they have won only two suggests having a good academy is not and never will be essential.

Couldn't disagree more, an absolutely ridiculous statement IMO. Bringing through your own quality youngsters is vital to a teams chances. Just look at the sides that have won and dominated the SL competition since it's inception. Bradford for starters brought through some terrific youngsters at the time of their success. From Fielden and Pryce to Peacock and Deacon.

The current Leeds team are where they are because of the superb group of youngsters they brought through together earlier this decade.

St Helens wouldn't be where they are today if the likes of Wellens and Cunigham hadn't come through your system, and you certainly wouldn't be continuing to challenge for honors this year if your academy hadn't brought through the likes of Gaskel, Lomax and Foster.

It's the fact that the lower sides in SL struggle to produce good quality youngsters in any great numbers that stops them progressing up the table.

Well, let's test your theory. Out of St. Helens and Wigan which club - over the entirety of SL - has produced more SL quality players. I'd say Wigan. I'd even stretch to a tie. But nothing more.

Number of Wigan titles: 2.
Number of Saints titles: 5

Indeed, I'd argue Wigan have produced more SL players than Leeds and Bradford.

Number of Leeds titles: 5
Number of Bulls titles: 4.

I'm not denigrating youth development. But to suggest such is "essential" does not seem in line with results.

It's a huge part but not the only part of creating a title winning side IMO. It was the other parts of the jigsaw that Wigan lacked that probably cost us a title or two. The constant chopping and changing of coach and in turn poor culture at the club was more than detrimental to our chances.

Your almost suggesting that Saints could still challenge for honors next year if the likes of Lomax, Gaskel and Makinson hadn't come through your academy. Something I severely doubt. As I would Wigan's chances if we took the likes of Sam, Joel, Charnley and Mossop out of the Wigan side.

Bradford are on the slide in part because of their distinctly average youngsters coming through, coupled with a few other things of course. Saints like Bradford have lost a lot of their best and most experienced players of late, but because of your far superior academy you've been able to overcome their departures.

Really? Props coming through their academy? I'm struggling to think of many as most of their props have come from others clubs e.g. Platt (which was over twenty years ago anyway), Cowie, O'Connor. There may have been plenty coming through during the history days but that production line has dried up and not just there but everywhere.



Perhaps a better way of assessing the "essential-ness" of academies would be to evaluate the performance of teams with weaker academies in comparison to stronger ones. You can use the pies in your argument but why didn't you use Leeds who had a strong academy system which has recently reaped rewards? By using the pies and not considering others you are presenting only a snippet of fact which isn't necessarily truth.

Let's not kid ourselves.

Madge came in with a specific gameplan (one which nearly every coach in super league has a dig at when they say ''and they play the game in the right way'' when referring to saints/warrington/leeds), but none of the methods he brought in were maintable or condusive to long term success, and couldn't be executed without experienced heads in certain positions, hence the reason he has barely bloodied any new youngsters this season. Already this season teams began to work it out.

I fully expect normal service to resumed next season, in fact it already has this season as wigan failed to make the grand final.

Well you've had madge for 2 years an already a new coach is coming in. How long do you reckon wane will last?

Poor culture you say?

The thing with culture is it's something built over time. Madge can't just come in wave his magic wand and alter the culture at the club.

He came in and gave you a gameplan to win a title. Now it's past it's sell by date.

Of course they've dried up. But within that context Wigan have hardly been prop-less. Again, I'm not talking about the likes of a Kevin Ward or a Graham. But the likes of O'Carroll, Prescott and (probably) Mossop are enough to give any club a solid platform on which to build. And there can be no question that Wigan have produced far better second row forwards than Saints since the arrival of SL.



I think you need to familiarize yourself with the definition of [url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/essentialessential[/url

[i"1. Absolutely necessary".[/i

Let's substitute those words into my original statement: [i"having a good academy is not and never will be absolutely necessary (to winning SL)". [/i

There is no force I am aware of that guarantees any top academy side future success. On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that a team with a modestly gifted academy could go on to win SL with the aid of a good coach, plenty of money and a bit of luck. How many kids have Huddersfield produced - yet they were not far away from a couple of Challenge Cups and were realistic title contenders this season.

Let's return to Wigan for a moment. A club which has probably produced more SL players than any other club. This is a team which has not only underachieved in SL - it came within a hair's breadth (after some crooked transfer dealings) of being RELEGATED.

Right, I've deleted a boat-load of posts in order to clean this thread up and make it more readable. In future I suggest that if you feel that someone is attempting to troll you do one (or both) of two things a) be the bigger person and ignore the post causing offence and rather than get involved in a petty slanging match and b) use the report system to offer your opinion that the post is a trolling attempt. HOWEVER before doing b), make sure that you have read and considered the post and can offer a reasoned complaint rather than flying off the handle and complaining simply because you disagree with something the poster has written, it is far easier for us to delete one offending post than half a thread.

Now stay on topic. Any posts here in response to this will be deleted.

TS

Thinking about it - if there is one absolute necessity in Rugby League that will give you an outstanding chance of securing a Grand Final it is - [imoney[/i.

Prescott will probably stay but O'Carroll? He's a fringe first 17 at best. Mossop is a good shout but we've produced Graham and Clough during the same time.



Change the essential to critical and the argument remains. You're more likely to be there or thereabouts if you have a better academy system which you could say is evidenced by the fact the previous six Grand Finals have all contained at least one team with a significantly better than average academy system (this year's having more homegrown players than any other previous Grand Final). There will always be exceptions to the rule but as a general principle a good academy is arguably the strongest foundation for success. Having some money behind you may help but it is only a short-term solution because of the nature of the cap i.e. retention of players is normally cheaper than an acquisition so the creation of a good youth programme becomes a key investment area for clubs with money e.g. Warrington.

How many players have come through Wigans academy and got more SL titles than the club itself? Bet theres a few. Long, Gilmour, Forshaw off the top of my head. Definatly a few with more cup medals too.

Scott Naylor?

You tell that to Warrington!

O'Carroll is a solid, grafting prop. I never claimed he was a world-beater.



Having a good academy will indeed give you a better chance of success. But the issue we're debating is whether it is "absolutely necessary" to win a GF. This is patently not true.

Given what seems like a century of underachievement I'm fairly certain Warrington fans are happy with the results recent injections of money have secured.

So a couple of solid grafting props and a kid who is only just making an impact qualifies Wigoon as having a production line of props? I have to disagree.

Going back to the OP. I concurred next year I would actually expect us to move on from where we where this year.

I'll get to the youth debate in a minute.

If we start at prop.

We have lost Graham and no doubt we have not replaced him, but I would argue we don't need to, if anything Graham spent the last 5 years doing too much of the forward work and that needs to be shared around. So we have lost Graham, but we did not see anything much of Perry he will be like a new signing. We have also added with Laffranchi. Megennis will be a year older and more experienced and bigger. Clough will be fit (please). We have a bunch of Props LMS, Clough, Megennis who are 20 somethings and will get bigger and better with age. That is a strong basis to go forward, with the experience and talent of Perry/TP and Laffranchi to back them up.

2md row. Wilkin back to his best, Sia has been mostly great this year and again is a 20 something forward with the potential to improve even more. Add to this Flannaghan for Moore, Dixon who was getting better and better at the end of the season. Flannery offers solid back up and of course Laffranchi who we are not sure but is a 2nd rower, but may play prop.

Roby hooking enough said , but with Flannaghan, Lomax and Lance to back up this posistion is strengthened.

Wings we have 2 great young lads, with back up from Gardner, - I can't recall when we had 3 wingers competiting for positions. Foster and Makinson will get better after their first full year.

Centres for me it has to be Wheeler and Shenton. If Wheeler strikes out, then Meli to cover. And we go shopping in 2013 to find a centre.

Halfbacks well they got us to a GF and CC semi pretty much on their own, next year they will have Lance to add experience to that energy and raw talent.

FB well the good money is on Wellens, but we have people just ready to take that jersy off him.

All in all I think we have added depth in a few positions and the youth stepping up this year, will be better for it next year.

Yes we all think another prop would ice the cake nicely, but whose to say we are done signing people.

There are plenty of other people on the move this week.

It was getting a bit long that last one.

For me the player developement discussion misses the point. Teams with strong youth set ups have a key weapon in their armoury. But with the Federation ruling this has become more critical than previously. Mugwup uses wigan as an example and points out their titles to back up his arguement.

I would say that's fine, but in the past other teams would just go and get several pacific islanders to compete as their youth was not as strong. Now they can no longer do this and this leaves those with poor youth set ups at a disadvantage. They will only get 2nd dibbs on the talent emerging at other clubs and will not be able to fill gaps in their aging overseas quota players without forking out transfer fees.

Hence we see clubs now searching the championship like they have not do in about a decade to find players, we have seen more transfer money coming back after years of clubs not paying transfers.

Those with youth have a head start and the rest are playing catch up. I would not be surprised to see Wakey stronger next year after being forced to expose more of their youth to top flight football as they could not afford to get ozzie or Kolpac journey men to fill their ranks.

Money is essential, but once you reach the cap, having more does not offer any difference in the quality of player you can buy.

The problem for a club with 'new money' is that at first they become a home for players that have been moved on from top clubs, who can secure a big deal on the back of their "trophy winning experience" and then just play out a few years going through the motions. This happened to us from 2004-2008. How many players did we sign from Bradford/Saints that had won things there...and never won a thing with us.

I wonder whether Hull FC will experience this in the coming years...

Well players are not daft, they can see where the money is, if I was a player with a decent history, but realising that the current club are getting ready to move on, I'd be looking for a chairman with a big cheque book.

Wigan's problem has never been producing talented kids, but in taking them the next step, and integrating them into the first team squad. This is an area of development that teams like Saints and Leeds have been far more successful at, and also clubs like Huddersfield have benefitted from taking the Wigan failures, and turning them into first team players.

It should be noted that Wakey finished 4th in the under-20s which was higher than Saints and Leeds.

I don't think we can really assess where Saints were up to at the u20s level due to the degree of disruption caused by first team injuries. I think they went down to a loss, for example, when a bunch of them were taken off to London to play for the first team against Quins. After all, the u20s is there to produce first team players, not to win u20s grand finals or league leaders (even though competing is obviously part of a player's development).

Leeds, who have won 5 from the last 8 titles have produced an awful lot of youngsters.
Hall, BJB, possibly Ablett, Sinfield, McGuire, Bailey, JJB, Clarkson and Burrow are all from their academy.
Hardacker was signed as a youngster a la Wilkin and I'm not sure where they got Kirke from, but I'm pretty sure they developed it.

When Bradford were winning they had a lot players coming through, including Peacock and Fielden, two fo the best forwards at the time. Paul Deacon, Leon Pryce are other stars, and their system developed Robbie Paul but they had quite a few young forwards come through as well, such as langley, radford(?) and parker.

What a quality academy gives you is a pool of players to start off with. There's never enough quality out of contact to make a top team from, plus we've the salary cap to contend with now, which doesn't help.

It may not be the be all and end all, but it gives you a massive head start.