Quote ="DaveO"No you weren't.
Courtesy of Rouges:
2004 Challenge Cup Final
St Helens: Wellens; Gardner, Gleeson, Talau, Albert; Hooper, Long; Fozzard, Cunningham, Mason, Joynt, Gilmour, Sculthorpe (capt). Subs: Feaunati, Bibey, Edmondson, Wilkin.
That is three out of the 1st 17 in that final who came through Saints academy.
As I said the basis of Saints success over the SL era has been based on bought in players. That 2004 side is a good example (even paid us a transfer fee for Bibey!) and proves what I said earlier that compared to the 2007 GF side I mentioned that had a majority of players from outside the club earlier successful sides had even more players brought in.
Where this idea Saints have been good at promoting local academy produced players over their successful era came from I don't know.
Dave'"
that was one of our worst years for youth development. over the course of Super Leauge we have consistently had 5 or 6 academy products in the team
In the 2002 Grand Final over one third of the team came through the Academy system, which is a pretty good number IMO.
