Interesting article there.
Quote Instead, the club put all its backing behind youngsters. Children aged around 14, but some even younger, have been handed thousands of pounds in a bid to attract all the best young talent in the country to Wilderspool.
Unfortunately, the scheme did not pay dividend enough. There have been the success stories of Jon Roper, Lee Penny, Mark Hilton, Iestyn Harris and Paul Sculthorpe but they have been too few.'"
I remember going to a fans forum one time when Paul Darbyshire was talking about this, around the time we'd set up the scholarship and squadbuilder and that stuff. I think someone had asked why we were successful in the 90s at developing young talent, citing those names above, and he said it was basically a scattergun approach of throwing money in front of parents and lots of kids who were never going to be close to making it took huge cheques from the club.
I had hoped to hear a story about how we once had a great scouting network that dug out Harris and Scully but it sounds like it was just chuck money at enough kids and you might get lucky once or twice.
