The big lesson from Wigan's winning performance against Salford is the importance of concentrating on junior development rather than buying a team from elsewhere. Wigan's youth have been incredibly good. Ten senior Wigan players missing (9 before the match and one more early into the match) and still the replacements from the club's juniors have performed at a superior level to experienced former NRL and SL stars. But it is obvious that the emphasis should be on the word "former."

We should also note the tremendous coaching skills of Shaun Wane, unquestionably the best coach in Super League.

In all fairness it takes years to nurture and develop a good youth system, so what is he supposed to do till then, but buy a squad. The dr biggest mistake is throwing money and buying for the sake of it rather than showing patience and signing players when they became available and building over 2-3 years.

I agree with you. Dr Koukash cannot pull talented Salford youth out of nowhere. But if he is in this for the long haul he should be pumping lots of money into youth development at Salford. It will take at least 5 years to start to see results, but he has to start now.

And as you say he seems to be buying for the sake of it. Some of the players he bought are not that that good or else have passed their use by date (I exclude Meli and Sau from that category). I think that the racehorse magnate suffers from a bit of impatience.

Pearson at FC has invested heavily in our youth set up after the previous regime ran it into the ground and we have a very good crop of youngsters coming through and 3 played for England last week.

People think it's that easy.

Hey, why don't you just focus abit on junior development marwan?

Koukash could invest for 10 years and be nowhere near wigan, or leeds, or saints. Salford have no real history as an RL club. Yougsters from that area, the best ones will get better deals from the more extablished teams most of the time.

It's such a cliche ''you can't buy a team, you need to build and focus on junior development''.

What Koukash needs to do, is get a top quality coaching structure in place, ans sign the RIGHT players, hungry players. Acquire success, then salford will be a more attractive proposition for young players and that's when they can grow the youth system.

Salford have signed mercenaries and have failed to get a top coach in, that's their problem. People talk about youth development in such a flippant way, the same way as they would if koukash needed to sign a few more backrowers or something. Overhauling a youth system and reaping benefits takes YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS.

Unfortunately, with relegation once again looming over everyone's heads, we're gonna see a return to the cheque-book teams.

No one in SL has a 'cheque book' team apart from salford and they would have had one regardless of relegation.

Yes indeed. Another reason why the people running the RFL have shown themselves to be real dunces.

And of course all the work that has been done in youth development in the south of England will be undermined because with P & R in place of licencing there will be no professional team in London for the southern youth to aspire to play for. The only hope is for someone to find a rugby league loving investor to take over London Broncos. But Nigel Wood and his cohorts have proven that they are not competent to undertake such a mission, and probably couldn't be bothered anyway.

We'll said........the minute he took over he was gobbling it off about who he would sign and ended up with a bunch of crap,over-rated and over the hill mercenaries......you deserve all you are getting.

That's why I said "we're going to", not "we are" - just wait and see - I've seen my side do it too many times.

Nah.
SL clubs knew it made more sense to sign overseas, pension seeking, holidaying crocks than invest in development .
Dual registration anyone?
SL clubs,not all, have done the game in this country a big disservice .
What you sow so shall you reap. For some clubs there is nothing to harvest because the seed money was wasted and went elsewhere .

Wigan's youth system has been motoring along for decades and decades. There has always been a culture in the town to breed quality Rugby League players.

Maybe the RFL could invest even more in the town on development, Wigan can't sign them all on. An extra ten-fifteen Wigan lads every year distributed throughout the sport would be a great supplement to whats currently coming through.

Pity they've never really used it to it's potential during SL, preferring to cheat the salary cap instead.
They could've maybe won the GF 6 times...

Why is that a problem?
The standard on the field has been dropping and attendances have been propped up with cheap tickets.
Most of the clubs in SL have been protected from relegation for large parts of the last 18yrs and they're still not producing quality youngsters.

The eighties and nineties hit you really hard didn't it?

Bless xx

Personally I hope the Salford experiment works, if they can somehow get them preforming as something like a team and hopefully playing some good Rugby then not only will they add some of that quality that we all crave, but rich people know a lot of other rich people and maybe they'll start to take notice and our great game can start to make some real progress. The youth side will come, in a salary cap sport it's practically unavoidable,but I think Koukash trying to buy immediate success is actually a good thing.

Wow, another Wiganner still living off trophies bought 20 odd years ago, who'd have thought it.


Unlike that all conquering Wigan team of the noughties that built it's team on youth eh.... Didn't have to buy/cheat it's way out of relegation that one did it

It must have hurt though, getting drubbed and watching us lift all those shiny pots.

I hear Tesco's car park looks lovely at this time of year.

If only we were all conquering in every decade instead of just some eh? How I envy other teams... Oh wait

Insecure. Much?

Go back a few years and the same people said the same things about Warrington and Huddersfield,now we have a Warrington and Huddersfield. that everyone bar three clubs at best would swap with everyday of every week. Soon Salford will join the big boys as a legitimately big club and you can smell the nervousness, bitterness and jealousy about them

Aren't people usually nervous, bitter and jealous of success? I'm not taking the p, currently Salford don't look like they are going to have anything to be jealous of any time soon. And to be fair to RL fans, when teams do rise up the ranks they are generally well received rather than scorned - Widnes, Catalans, Castleford, etc. In contrast, fans are critical of the 'Ka$h Club because they see someone trying to fast track success and failing. Nothing we've seen so far suggests his plans are coming to any sort of fruition.

Yeah, because Leeds never signed anybody in the 90s did they???

Out of interest how many of these Wigan jnrs are signed up from outside the Wigan town area? Wether spending cash on 1st team players or spending it signing the best youngsters in the country using scholarships to entice them it's still buying a team in the long run. Now if Wigan were significantly funding jnr clubs in Wigan to attract and develop kids I'd be impressed.