Done some maths using the club website and I make the average age of our 17 player squad tonight at 24 years & 8 months.

And to be honest I don't think the club is getting much recognition for the quality, and number, of British youngsters we have emerging, many of whom have come through the ranks.

In the Leeds game on SKY, the CC game last week and the BBC commentary again tonight reference was made to the numbers of players the opposition were missing, but no such mention of our missing players, nor in particular how the rich vein of form and results we've produced during those absences has been achieved with a large core of young lads .

Still, the world can't turn it's back on us for ever.

We are definitely overlooked in regards to our youth but they will get their day in the sun, we just need to kick on from here and get some silverware!

IIRC our under 19s are top of their competition and the under 16s are unbeaten.

The 16's lost a couple at the start of the season to Leeds and Wigan, but only by 10 and 4 points.

The 19's have only lost to Leeds away (we then beat them at home)

I'm delighted to see our young players coming up to SL level after watching them at U19's. They never look out of place either.

Smith needs to sort this out; you can't win anything with kids.

We have always given youth and British players a chance... Plenty of times we have put young teams out and teams with Zero or 1 overseas players on the pitch..

It's just gets ignored by the sky cronies everyone else in the media for that matter... Yet when Wigan (the team that used to buy everyone back in the day) do it they get a Boots n All special done on them and it's all over the back page of the paper..!

I am quite happy that this aspect of our club is under the radar in comparison to those other clubs as the pressure and level of expectancy can be controlled by the management and not to any extent by the media.

A few "he's the next big this or that" might not always be welcome let's just carry on what we are doing happy in the knowledge that we have a chance to shape the way that future competitive Wire teams are put together.

It's about balance surely? I'm not desperate to see an all home grown team just a good proportion that shows we are a club where a youngster will get a top quality environment to develop and a chance to shine

I stand corrected

It isn't a media conspiracy that they focus on the youth players of Leeds, Wigan and Saints and ignore ours. It's a reflection of reality: those clubs have produced a lot of very good players who have had long and successful SL careers, sometimes at other clubs. Warrington haven't. We have brought a lot of young players through to the first team that have had 30-50 or so games and then faded away as they never really made it. We haven't produced internationals.

Lets rack our brains and think of the young players we have produced who have been genuine top SL players since 2000.

1. Paul Wood
2. Chris Riley
3. Mike Cooper

I would put Ben Harrison in there but as we signed him from Barrow at age 17 or so its pushing it to claim him as a Warrington produced player.

There have been a lot in the category of "good enough for SL but not good enough to succeed at a top club": guys like Ian Sibbit, Paul Noone, Steve Pickersgill, Gary Hulse

Now if we were to do that exercise for who Leeds, Wigan and Saints have produced in the same time, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a better list than above. In fact even the likes of Wakefield and Cas would probably beat us. Wakefield I can think of two straight off the top of my head: Ellis and Westwood.

Of course the response to this will be, as it ever was, yes but the [icurrent crop[/i of Academy players is really special and you will get some top players out of that. We will just have to wait and see on that front. But until we have produced a series of genuine top players not just three in a decade then you will have to excuse the media for not bracketing us with Leeds, Saints and Wigan.

Pretty certain that Ben Harrison came through our youth system, whilst he hails from Barrow his only professional club is Warrington.

Ben Harrison played in our U16's and came from Barrow Island, so you can certainly say he came through our Scholarship set up.

But the point in general about Leeds, Saints and Wigan is certainly true, we have struggled in the past to bring through first team players from our youth system. Since 2005 we have handed 26 debuts to kids from our own set up, but only about 3-4 of those have become permanent fixtures. It is early days, but the ex 2011 U20's are now coming into the first team and certainly some of them will be here in 3-4 years time, so good progress has been made. Plenty of work still to do though.

The argument that historically we haven't done well with youth development, and that the current crop of youngsters may never go onto match the achievements of their peers ar WIgan, Leeds etc. is irrelavent to my original point, which is this.

As we sit here now, today, Sunday, our squad is down to the bare bones and yet despite that the youngsters are lifting their and the teams performances and results to unprecedented levels this season. They deserve credit for that, or at least recognition that they are showing huge potential, continual improvement and maturity and some rollicking good rugby league. The media seized on every opportunity to deride us as Dads Army so we deserve some credit for the transformation.

Only history will tell us whether the Warrington youngsters of 2014 were as good as Leeds or Wigan's current crop but in terms of potential, results and week-in-week-out endevaour in this current moment they are at least their equals and deserve credit for it, not a symphony of silence.

Does Tony Smith deserve any credit for it too?

He was criticised earlier in the season for not recruiting established players to replace the big names that were leaving. My take on it a couple of months ago was that we were struggling because Smith had put his faith in giving opportunities to players that weren't as good as he thought. But maybe TS was right to leave us reliant on young players?

Absolutely, and I'll be honest I for one thought he'd gambled on youth and it had backfired big time but I was clearly very wrong. On that basis I'm going to stop questioning Tony and stick to Asotasi, who seems a safer target.

No point in spending a lot of time, energy and money on developing youth if we keep buying in proven players that gives youth little chance of coming in and proving their ability.

You also need to be able to let them fail as bigger lessons are learnt through fixing up failures than if you win every week. When bringing youth through you have to have patience and give them time so that we can reap the rewards.

Unfortunately fans EXPECT to win every week which means the kids are under pressure to perform from day 1 without being offered a bit of understanding that they may make mistakes initially but they will work damn hard to fix them up.

Made up with the youngsters this year, they really have stepped up to the plate and proven they are SL standard.

The average ages of Saints and Leeds for the round were around a year higher.

And Wigan.... As you are doing the sums..

I've worked it out to be 24, so only a bit younger than us.

Nne thing about SL being currently poor by comparison, is that we are having to produce our own, and they are getting more opportunities. But whether it affects the overall quality of the league, is another question, and one that should interest us all.

I think these days clubs are producing quite a good number of well developed professional players that prepare themselves well and are physically not outclassed by senior pros.

What is missing at the moment is star quality in the backs and halves. There have only ever been a handful of those players at any one time but there don't seem to be many coming through these days, apart from Tomkins and Eastmond a few years before that.

You can't deny the quality of guys like Sam Burgess and James Graham, up there with any of the games best forwards, but the question is where are the guys like Offiah, Davies, Schofield, Edwards, Andy Gregory, John Woods?

In 2012 a poster from another club, did the same average age maths with our then squad. The point they were making was that we had a squad of old codgers and within 2 years the squad would be broken up and we would be back to the Wire of old.

They were right about our then squad being broke up.



I cant find the post but I think at that time our average age came out around 29.