Lolehei to retire immediately due to injury

He plays for Salford now, not Leeds.

Think he means Lui

Austin won't get 300k a year at Leeds. He'll be off to Australia (end of season) where he'll probably get 300k even if he's not a first choice halfback.

If they've been watching our games over there, I highly doubt he will.

I guess the one part of the rumour is we will find out in about a week.

If true and we miss out I will be disappointed, he is a top half back that's available. If true and we just miss out then time seriously need to look at our recruitment process firstly in selection but also how we go about negotiating with these top teir players, we just missed out on Barbados not so long ago too, what's going wrong in the conversations were having that makes them choose saints wigan or Leeds over warrington. I know that the more likely to win the grand final will be one factor but we neither must not be selling ourselves or the plan to become a grand final winner very well?

Austin could go to wakey this season they have cap space? If he does ho there and we pay his wages effectively would that money still go against our cap ?

They might have cap space, but that's cos they don't have any money

Austin won’t be leaving till this season is over.

Yes.

If that's true I'm afraid pre-season warm weather training is going too far IMO

I can't see anything more than a short term loan with another club for this year then signing a 3 year deal with Wigan. Leeds have the cap space for a short term deal with Eastmond buggering off, Wigan never replaced George Burgess so have cap space and apparently Leigh have cap space.
I think he'll sign a short term deal with Wigan then become their marquee for next year with Hastings moving to the Tigers.

Interesting to see Warrington outbidding Wigan for Williams. Wigan now frantically scrambling around to find someone to force into retirement so they can afford to bring their homesick boy back whilst Warrington continue to push for glory. As a fan of a rival I've got to admire Moran, he's unrelenting in his quest to bring you the title. Whilst Saints and every other club in RL are looking for savings, he's out there throwing it around.

Also interesting to see the score from the Under 16s academy game tonight. Warrington 0 Saints 30, did anyone watch it? This is the age group where 14 of the Saints team were from Rylands. Most of the Saints team from Warrington beating the Warrington team from Oldham, Yorkshire and the Under 15s no doubt. If the effort into the academy setup matched the effort that clearly goes into recruiting established players for the first team, Warrington could dominate.

Well I'd do your research saddened seeing as at least 4 lads from that age group have already quit rugby and left saints amazing scholarship program.

He has a point though still.

The club have admitted themselves numerous times that they haven’t done enough in this area.

I'm not surprised. A year with no rugby and an uncertain future plus possibly decent paid work for some will always pull some away from the game.

I remember lots of posts on here when Lewis Charnock joined St Helens, where he was described as a definite star of the future.

An Under 16`s game, is essentially schoolboys level, so it is very difficult to predict growth rates, while some of the bigger lads dominate just because of their size, when a lot of them don`t grow any bigger.

It is very much a lottery at that age to predict who will progress to 1st team football.

Absolutely. I have seen countless number of youngsters who run through everybody at a young age and never develop passing skills. They suddenly find the game much more difficult when others catch up and start flattening them.

Charnock chose Saints simply because they offered more training sessions and took it more seriously, which was what started that debate?

Warrington are way behind Saints, Wigan and Leeds in youth development generally, the proof of that is obvious to see. There is a direct correlation between the strength of the academy setup and success on the field, it's easier to cover injuries, rebuilding the squad is quicker and cheaper if you can bring players through etc. IMO it's the main reason Warrington haven't won SL yet, everything else has been in place for getting on for 20 years now. The suggestion has been that Warrington don't put enough effort into it, or certainly don't do it consistently year on year. I can see that first hand as I watch relatives play at or around the scholarship age groups they should be looking at and there are never any scouts from Warrington at the games. They also don't seem to bother with any sort of pathway to develop players who have the talent but aren't reaching scholarship standard. I regularly hear coaches from Warrington teams slating the Warrington system and encouraging their players to look elsewhere and that shouldn't be happening. Of course it's a lottery as to whether players eventually progress and develop into first team players, but if I was a fan of Warrington I'd be disappointed knowing that the best players from Warrington quite regularly don't get picked up by the club. That Rylands team that sparked so much debate is proof of that. As a team they are outstanding and two or three of their players said to be in the top 5 in the country in the age groupd and them not being signed by Warrington rightly raised eyebrows. Again, there's no guarantees they will ever amount to anything in the game, but you'd stand a better chance if you were taking the best young players. I just think given the size of your club and the investment being made in making it a success, the best players in Warrington should be signed by Warrington and those with potential should be being worked with and monitored along with their community club, a sort of scholarship reserve setup if you like to see if any can push through to the top level. It's certainly better than it used to be, but perhaps needs to be more of a focus.

Realistically of course we would have to outbid Wigan! Let's face it Wigan will be his preferred destination in all of superleague and in all honesty Wigan represent a much higher likelihood of winning superleague than we can present. We really need that first win I think to change the recruitment dynamic.

It would happen with you as well, let's say we wanted to sign percival from saints. We wouldn't exactly manage that by offering him less would we? We'd have to at least match your offer and sell the POSSIBILITY of becoming immortalised in Warrington folklore as a mwmver of the team to finally deliver us the coveted trophy, as well as maybe winning a challenge cup or 2 along the way. That's selling against saints who offer a far greater track record in recent years of delivering the superleague trophy, it's not an easy sell. I suppose he would maybe want to be on the other side of the wire v saints knockout games hoodoo we have over you though so we could play on thay too

Agree 100% with this sad one, great post.

You should get a job at wire in the youth development setup. You'd probably get that wire training tracksuit with your initials you've wanted so badly for so long.

If I am not mistaken, we lost 3 or 4 players from the U16’s last year during the pandemic to Sale Sharks. Latterly, the likes of Thewlis, Dean, Doro, Wrench, Longstaff and Gannon suggests we have done rather better recently in terms of potential.
Would really like to hear a response to Saddened from WalterWizard, if appropriate, who is better placed than most to give an assessment.

Wakefield are the latest club to enquire about him..

Richard Agar has ruled Leeds chances out of getting him ‘long term’ as they’ve been told Williams wants to live and play in the North West.

It’s Wigan or Warrington by the looks of things.

Reading between the lines, Williams options seem to be:

- Sign with Wigan right now for decent money

- Sign for Warrington for 2022 for huge money, but look elsewhere for a short-term option this season

Hopefully, he chooses the latter.

The third option is that we engineer a way for one of our half-backs to leave right now but that seems unlikely.

So 'short term' Leeds for 2021 then 2022+ the Wire?



I'd be very surprised if he ended up anywhere else but Wigan, by the sounds of it we were in with a very good shout for 2022, I think the fact you can probably accommodate him immediately makes you very strong favourites now.