And he's not in SL, so is out of bounds in this thread!

He left the Academy to go to uni, definitely a hudds lad and through the academy

didnt say they had to stillbe in sl

Yes he was at cas you are right. Plays for Leigh now though.

I know he’s a Huddersfield lad but didn’t realise he was there before uni.

We could be here for days though. Is this limited to superleague years or last ten years or something then? If not it’s a pretty big task

Tenuous!

The title of the thread is "Rank SL teams on the their ability to create academy stars"...

The lower leagues will be full of players who never got near first team in SL...are they the "stars" the OP is enquiring about?

Absolutely correct.

Needs to be "currently in SL", otherwise it's a nonsense...and near impossible.

True, OP talks about players who “benefitted” SL and people are listing any old Joe Average or kids that have a handful of appearances. One team could have more academy players than another club but that club could’ve produced much more better players who had a bigger impact on SL

I don't think it is a success for most academies to have had players that go on to have good super league careers, but did not debut in SO for that club. Seems to me that is failing to develop talent that was later proven. Exceptions being Leeds and Wigan who produce so many

I would say they had to have spent the majority of their career in SL. Players who played a couple years at the end of their careers in a lower league can still be discussed, like Micky Higham.

It’s very difficult to define an academy product. Some players go all the way from under 13’s development squads to first team at one club. Others go through various clubs at different stages.

Ryan Hampshire for instance was on Wakefield’s books as a young kid, then got picked up by Hull before finishing at Wigan. I’d have to call him a Wigan product but two other clubs played a part and that’s not unusual. If you go a long way back Leeds have a claim on Tom Johnstone but seriously I don’t think anyone would call him a product of the Leeds club.

Oats and Dagger are two Wakefield products who moved to other Academies shortly before making the first team. Both in truth are Wakey products but will go down as produced by there new clubs and in truth that’s fair enough if a little vexing.

As I say it’s complex.

If we were to rank teams on the number of current Super League players to come through their academy I would go for

Leeds
Wigan
Castleford
Catalans
Huddersfield
Warrington
Saints
Wakefield
Widnes
Hull combined
Salford

Well, when your finger has dried from licking it and sticking it in the air, how about justifying your opinion with some figures?

For example, I'm not sure there are that many Catalans products in the league (don't confuse being French with being a Catalans product).

Saints must be doing something right they top the tables for Superleague/Academy/Womens. The academy team attract players because of the structure and the tour against the australian teams. Also there are only two teams in Wigan and Saints that could field a competitive sidein super league from academy level past and present.

How do the Hull clubs manage with a shared academy? Do they pick a player each (like an NFL draft) or how do they decide who gets which player?

Wakefield have 6 (Jowitt, Johnstone, Wood, Batchelor, Crowther, Anakin), with 4 (Hooley, Wray, Kershaw and Ackroyd), in the first team squad, but yet to break through.

Elsewhere in SL, they "produced" Ferguson, Murphy, Griffin, Dagger, Oakes, Brough, Westwood.

Not as good as some, but not bad. It's just under 10% of the SL pool (based on 12x17; not point doing it by squad, as they are all different sizes/qualities).

With a big % of the pool being overseas players, it's actually over 10%.

I don’t have any statistics, but as you are saying I am wrong can you justify that with some figures?

So you've proffered a guess and want me to disprove it



If you have nothing meaningful to add to the thread, why waste time and effort posting?

Am I missing something here? You say "no point doing it by squad" then list at least 4 Wakefield squad players. That leaves 13, which as a percentage of 204 (12 x 17) is just over 6%

That means with 12 clubs in the SL Wakefield are producing less than the baseline average of just over 8% per club and nowhere near the 10% you claim.

Not having a go but that's clearly a different picture than the one you're putting forward.

If you do it by squad everybody's numbers would be less.
I'm sure Wakefield have improvement in this area to come but having 5 of those players being part of the starting 17 every week is pretty good. 30%
10 in a squad of 30 gives the same number.

How does that compare with other teams?

No, I simply used that to work out the size of the pool of SL players.

And technically, they are registered and paid as first team players for salary cap purposes.

You could work it out as 12 x 25, which I think is the minimum squad size, but it's all irrelevant to this thread, as the percentages worked out are proportional in relation to all other clubs in the pool.

It can get way too complicated - should we just count players with 1, 5 or 10 appearances? I guess I complicated it by suggesting a % in relation to my list.

Best just to list the number of players produced I guess (played or first team squad???)

Cynically, you could say that Wakefield only put those 4 in the squad to meet some kind of home-grown criterion.

Cas:

Shenton
Eden
Holmes
Milner
Massey
Trueman (via Bradford - he'll play 3 seasons for Cas under the age of 21 so counts as Cas homegrown)
Maher (Cumbrian born, came through Cas academy)
Clare
Gill
Douglas
Watts
Turner
+ O'Neill - yet to make senior debut

Elsewhere in Super League:

Westerman
Clark
Thompson
Lunt
Arundel
Huby

Plus Championship:
Ryan Brierley
Matty Dawson
Shaun Pick
John Davies
Dominic Brambani
Alex Rowe
Brad Day
Mike Knowles
Richard Lepori
Ben Johnston
Brandon Moore
Dan Fleming

And League 1:
Conor Fitzsimmons
Jack Lee
Richie Owen
Jordan Howden
Brad England
Charlie Martin
Ash Robson


Whether all of these made their first-team debuts for Cas either in cup competitions or in the league I don't know but majority have definitely played at some point for Cas. These are all off the teamsheets as of the last few weekends so I may have missed some too. Not a bad number!

I hate to bring facts into it, but a percentage of academy funding is based on player production, and wakefield were third in the rankings last year behind saints and Wigan. Hope that helps

Oh, I do love a good fact! Thanks for the clarity Mr Carter.