The players listed below were all considered good enough for selection in our first team squad for last season. Other than Southernwood who left to join the Bulls, are these players no longer equipped to make it at Superleague level?
Doesn't really say a lot for our youth development given that we have basicaaly signed mainly academy players from Lancashire clubs whom these lads were beating the previous year!!!


22. Cain Southernwood
26. Matthew Wildie
27. Russell Spiers
28. Kyle Trout
29. Matthew King
30. Danny Cowling

the lads we have signed from wigan and saints have sl and nl1 experience also wigan 20s and saints 20s have been up there for the last 4 or 5 season so these lads have won trophies at that level.

All these lads were part of the successful academy team which beat Wigan in the final last year. Strange how they havent been able to step up to the plate like players at other clubs.

wigan had a few of these lads that didn't play in the final and was playing in the reserves

Do we know how many of those Wigan lads have "stepped up to the plate"

I hoped to see some of that squad get a chance and maybe they will, who knows.

Wildie is in this year's squad, but I take your general point.

King was released at the end of last year and is a dewsbury now i think,Southernwood spat the dummy and has gone to Bradford, Wildie is in this years squad and may well get some game time, Trouts attitude needs to improve by all accounts, i dont know too much about the others.

last I heard about Danny Cowling was that he got injured and needed surgery

The wigan / Saints lads are a year older they are 20/21, all the boys from the under 18 championship team are 18/19 . The modern thinking is that a player is ready for SL at 21 / 22. If you watched Trout etc play in the under 20`s last season you could see they were not ready, You should compare the new signings with Davey. Next year we should expect to see Wildie, Trout etc to get some first team games. This year they should dominate the under 20`s. That said there is always an exception that proves the rule. Look out for Luke Walshaw, 6` 4`` 17 stone 17 year old centre. He has just signed full time for us and is training the house down, he will look good in the under 20`s and may push for a first team game or two.

I would say the more worrying thing is the fact 2 of the stand out Academy players vs the Australians the captain, Adam Milner and centre Jordan Thompson this year, came through the Scholarship at Wakefield and signed with Cas, this to me is quite simply a massive problem.

They have also had a taste of first team rugby and are younger than the lads from the successful Trinity Team of 2 years back.

There are several other players of the same generation that came through the Scholarship, left and are now playing at first team level at other SL clubs despite being so young.

I believe the policy at Trinity has harmed the development of players. That Academy winning team were deliberately held back that year whilst the 21's/reserves of the same year were shocking. It may have won you the league but I feel holding players back slows their development. The idea of Academy rugby is to develop players not win trophies.

Wakefield have invested and worked hard in brining in people to bring these juniors through but ultimately this is all for nothing while the policy stands of failing to nurture them and that policy clearly comes from the top.

John, Milner going to cas was all about money, him and Billy Harris left at the same time. Cas do pay big money to several promising 16 year olds, as you know its not a perfect science, some do go on to the next level - the vast majority do not. ( there is a stat out there saying that to date only 3 % of players who played under 15 international Rugby League have gone on to play SL ) So its a big cost to pay big money to several 16 year olds only to find that 3 out of 100 goes on to play SL.
Wakefield won the under 18`s title with a squad that cost the club less than 20 thousand pounds for the season. So your comments about our youth system harming players is at best just wrong. Our staff have identified players at low cost that other clubs have no interest in and turned them into championship winning players. ( The easy option is to throw money at under 15 internationals and hope ) Other clubs have bought the ` better` players and yet we have turned the average into the best.
Our under 20`s this season will go very well, as will our under 18`s. By the way I do not know of ` several ` players from the same age group that are playing 1st team and would suggest that Dale Morton will have played more SL games than any other of his age group from any club.
Also note that 9 of the championship winning team are now full time 1st team squad members.
Like all clubs some parts of our club are not great but our junior rugby set up is not one. The staff employed by the club are first class.

What Jonh is trying to say is that when our youngsters won the cup two years ago Wigin instead of playing their younguns in the 18s' promoted them at the expense of losing out on that competition into the reserves playing against bigger and better opposition in order to give them that valuable experience which they would not have got if they had held them back in the 18s' like we did, by doing so those players who were still eligable to play in the 18s' moved up a league and have since benefited from it by having some of those kids making 1st team debuts where as our lads were 12 month behind in experience and Kear did not know what to do for the best with them last season due to their inexperience.