Surely not a prop - without starting a debate again about the size a prop should be - Annakin is mobile enough to be a loose forward to me, I think that's where I see his position.

Fair enough but I don't think Agar has been as brave as he could have been though clearly far more open minded than Hull fans would have you believe.

Didn't our youth setup win some kind of award not too long ago.

They won the championship, however that was at some cost as many believe we held the players back a year in order to have an edge, as I recall.
Either the way the number of players going on from that squad to get SL opportunities is low - for what ever reason.

I think it was the Rugby League 9's you were talking about?

I think you might be thinking of the Community department that were put up as some kind of example for other clubs to follow

Seem to remember that our youth set-up/structure was billed as one of the best not long back too. And other clubs were encouraged to follow suit? Sure I read this in league express some time back.

The trouble is a young player can look like being a blinding prospect at an early stage and not go any further.I remember years back we had a certain player in our colts side who looked like the real deal and went on to play for the Great Britain colts alas things went no further and he ended up playing for Doncaster when they were at the bottom.He played centre for the colts and when he was at donny he ended up playing prop any one remember David Noble.

Noble is the record points scorer for Donny scoring 1751 point In a 16 year career in south Yorkshire.

He played prop in the very last period of that time.

Mark Endersby is probably a better example of genuine youth talent that ever made the transition into first grade from that time

I know you might want to emphasise the point you're making - but posting 4 times is a taking it a bit far







!!!!

iPad stutter....ooops

Didn't Noble score lots of points for........oh wait, has that been said before?

Anyway, we will always have this issue, as said above, 19 year old super stars are not always open age super stars.
Saying that, the likes of Edwards, Farrell, Tomkins who were all spotted early, were well coached at amateur and pro with Wigan (not the only example of course) and took full advantage of their talents.
I'm not sure we do that but there is a lot of infrastructure needed to be able to do that....including a team around them that can protect them through that early period.
Edwards was an easy spot as he was captain of both RU and RL England team but Tomkins had to work hard to get his chance, but when he got it the right people were able to bring it out of him.

I don't know, so I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking our setup isn't as good as that, certainly in at least some areas if not all.
I'd love to have a club that the best youth were drawn to because of our setup, but if that isn't matched with a profitable club we will just lose them anyway so may not be worth the investment until later in our building process.

The Billy Conway, Garry Spencer era of colts were outstanding with Trevor Bailey, but only a few made it to regular top flight rugby and in my opinion, the best prospects were the half backs, Moules and Green and neither made it. Who can say if they would have done elsewhere.
I reckon Billy would have played for England if he'd been at Wigan like Martin Dermott.

There was a Fev colts team (which I had a trial for and was utterly out of my depth) the year before that was even better and won ever game I think. Not one player from that team ever made it, I'm not sure but I don't think any of them ever played in a first team fixture. They had a scrum half whose name was O'Toole who was the best player I ever played with and seemed like a genius to me but I never heard of him again - strange how it works.

Just shows that there's a huge gap from junior to senior rugby. I just wish we could unearth another Nigel Wright or Toppo - a traditional stand off, or another Nigel Bell for scrum half. The thing is with players like those you knew as soon as you saw them they would make the grade -they were the up to it as soon as they made their first team debut.

Another ex-Stanley Rangers local lad like Kevin Ward in the red, white and blue (instead of going to Cas)would be better and would really bolster our front row....

after a couple of trials with trinity the chairman at that time said hed never be a rugby player while hed a hole in his - our judgement aint improved much

Did i hear a similar story regarding Jamie Peacock??

That was Dean Sampson from what I'm told, I think we were simply outbid for Ward - think our player judgement has improved a lot since then however the Kevin Wards of this world are much thinner on the ground.

For the record the last Chairmans buy I know of was Austin Buchannan - make of that what you want.

Funnily though if you take your examples

Nigel Wright always looked the part but clearly his body wasn't quite as capable at senior level as we'd have all liked
Topper started playing quite late. He didn't play rugby as a kid (iirc)
Belly was a chunky little kid who early on you wouldn't have expected the man he would become. For me it was his attitude that made the difference as he developed through the different positions. That isn't always obvious until you get them on board. If it had been obvious, he'd have been stolen away I'm sure.

i bow to your superior knowledge in a lot of your posts on here vasty ,but stanley lads and particular stanley rugby players would be my specalist subject on mastermind

Shall we settle on both

ceartainly sir






certainly sir

Kevin Ward is a rugby league legend that Wakefield missed out on by not fostering close links to a local club only 2 miles out of Wakefield. He was playing for Stanley in 1970! Dean Sampson did ok for Cas as I recall aswell?

It's players like Annakin, Cowling and Trout that should be signed up on 5 year deals to retain local talent. Should try for regular curtain raisers to keep local clubs close and committed to Trinity.

Like most rugby fans, I'm all for seeing good local lads playing for their club but I'm not sure signing them up on 5 year deals is the way to go. I think for the likes of the 3 players mentioned 3 year deal would be ideal imo. So much can change for a player in 5 years, in both the positive and negative, injuries, form and basically not developing into the player the club thought.

Players worth a 5 year deal come along once every ten years if your lucky. Even then I wouldn't offer them that deal, it's suicidal IMO and would destroy a club like ours. The maximum is 3 years.