yeah fair enough, I can abide by that point. I'm a harsh critic in that I compare our centres to Australias. His passing is frustratingly wayward at times, though there's no way he flopped at saints and was "figured out as over-rated".

Shenton had 2 problems at saints, Gidley and Lyon. Walking in their shoes he never was able to convince the faithful he could follow in that sequence. I always liked him and wanted him to do well, but he never seemed to really be able to create anything, and poor passing cost us occasionally.

I think that that would be the legacy he left at saints ... Except turner has come in, who we all expected to be dire, and has done fantastically well for us so far, in an arguably worse saints team (I can see turner pushing for an international spot should saints have a good season)

there aren't many Jamie Lyon's though. That's what I mean, the Saint's fans and club iteself didn't wat rid of him as such, it just didn't work out due to injury really. He got intot he england side through Saints, so he must have been doing somehing right

Got in England side probably because he played for Saints. Would he have got in playing for Cas.

He played for England while at Cas but your point still stands. He had to do it at Sts to be regarded rather than at Cas.

Put with real emotion but sadly nothing to do with what I was saying. The point being answered was that these players had stayed downt lane because Cas made a big effort to retain them and reward a perceived loyalty by Cas.

My argument is that they never really had much to fear other than in Shenton's case which IMHO was all smoke and mirrors and Clark's case which is yet to be concluded. Huby is a decent player and I'm sure Saints were interested - but this was clearly not at a pay rate that was tempting enough or Huby showed an astonishing lack of ambition considering Saints success in recent times.

Thought thas thread was about our home grown players ,backs up what I said earlier in it , folk don't wanna debate what happened to our lads, sooner talk about our friends across the city

I think it is fair to discuss other "academies" if we are comparing to ours.
You are right that we have got stuck on particular players but Cas is a good comparison to Wakefield.
We are both in the lower half of the league, both have less money than most other clubs, both can easily (geographically speaking) recruit from the other teams recruitment area. Yet if one is perceived to be better than the other, it would be good to understand why.

This thread consists of 6pages half to do with cas ,I'm bored get on with it

I agree, there should be no threads on here that try scorer doesn't like, bad mods

I hav reason to suspect that try scorer is from Parkes!

I am ashamed!

In all seriousness though TryScorer, you are alledgedly in a great position to explain about how we can make our home grown players in to long serving 1st teamers.
Money apart, what should Wakefield be doing better?

i haven't had time to read the previous pages but the last ten minutes of sundays game we seemed to have more stucture and desire to go forward.

Think your just trying to wind me up pop tart my views have been given on here on many occasions think you all know my feelings on what happened to our youth ,I've even touched on it on this thread , but folk on here prefer not to listen , but eh most who come on here and wonder why nothings happened with our youths have never even seen a n academy game sorry lads sometimes its like trying to educate pork

I genuinely am not trying to wind you up.
I'm actually interested.

It's just sometimes hard to get the point when we get on a particular player.
Most on here are not coaches so don't know the inside story.

You do say we didn't invest in the youth but does that mean others did and we missed out? And if so what did they do?
And which players do you think would have kicked on if at another club?

I'm sure we'll go over the subject again so we can discuss another time.

Given that none of us have a time machine and acknowledging how bitter you are about what happened to that particular crop of youths, what do we need to do differently *in future* to stop it happening again?

I'd guess Dubbo.

Try Scorer, I feel I need to address you since I am the one who de-railed the thread so to speak.

We can talk about the playing ability of Huby, Shenton, Clark etc but I feel this is academic (excuse the pun) .......the point I made was that these players were ones that castleford invested in, even when they were in the Championship in most cases.

whether other clubs want them or not is unimportant, we digress there. The point I was raising is that they've been great assets to our club over the last few years, as I'm sure several of Wakefield's home grown players have. It raises the question of what clubs are doing to hang onto their young talent. But as I said earlier, this may not always be in the hands of the club.

I aren't gonna talk to myself, it's a forum, so if you're bored of reading this topic, please feel free to raise something different/new, and we will discuss it.

To say we are rambling for 3 pages about the same thing is a little hypocritical, considering you've spent 18 months complaining on here about Richie Mathers, which if collaborated would certainly surpass 30 posts. If I am incorrect I profusely apologise

To add to the individual examples, Ben Gledhill....
Would he have been better staying?

Clearly he thought he had a better future elsewhere, possibly to get more game time but he didn't get it at Salford either and now seems to be playing RU at Fylde.

For me this shows that there is some value staying as a home grown player for the player too as you have more value to the club.

=#FF0000Edit: Just looked on the Fylde website and he isn't listed in the first team so I may have made that up?! Anyone know what he is doing?

There was no problem bringing up tha point you did I've related many times how cas have looked after their youth,what I complained about was the fact that folk on here were eager to get into a debate about the cas academy but not about our youths from a championship winning year. Regarding mathers while realizing the forum is open my comments about our fullback were a dressed to Wakefield fans about a Wakefield player can't we where hypocricy comes into it

Being unbiased its much easier to comment on the cas youth than our own because they have managed to bring more through into SL, maybe thats the problem.
I don't watch the youth set up, so i am in no place to comment on the why's and wherefores as others clearly are, but the ideal would be to bring through to fruition enough to make a future wakefield team exactly that - a team full of wakefield players, however a team like Huddersfield winning the minor shield proved you don't need to do that.
Money is a major contributing factor also.

a lot of the time, especially at Cas, injuries have meant we've no option but to expose 17/18 year olds to SL. I guess it stands them in good stead for the future, but hampers current performance.

One thing's for certain, it'll be much harder to promote junior exploitation in super league now P&R is back

I remember we had to do it in the Kear era when Pitts and a prop who's name I forget and Wildie and some others got their shot
They looked ok at first but it was soon obvious that many younger players can not take the full season of super league. They need to be brought in gradually. Pitts in my opininion is a good player and I'd have him back. Personally i think he'd have been better staying but it was worth finding out if he could mix it with the big boys I guess.
Gledhill another example of the same. He was just not quite ready for the game physically but was nearly there. I remeber playing Sts and being shocked how much more physically intimidating their youngsters were compared to Ben.

I understand why people say it but I don't buy in to the "just play them" idea to take a young kid into the top flight. They're progress should be managed.

An example that springs to mind for me is a kid coming to play rugby union in a team I captained. We were a decent side at a good club but not professional level. He was obviously good but still growing. He had been at a good club. They played him the second row and they battered him.
His dad asked if I'd look after him.
I spent the rest of the season just making sure none of the meat heads took advantage and he hada storming season. He was fitter than everyone else so gave him chance to feel what it was like to be hit by a grown up but had support around him with no risk of letting the team down.
To me that is where the lower divisions should be used. A potential super league player who is just a year or two too young can be introduced through the "feeder" club. They get a good player, we get a player with experience.
We had other students comimng to play. It helped the old men on the field as they did the speed work and we did the grunt work and we were undefeated for a long time.
Some of those youngsters didn't have the right attitude to it and didn't kick on. Some stayed with us. Some stopped playing. It gave them chance to find out.

Pop Tart, I'm unsure, do you think that the U21's was a better option than dual reg'ing for young players in that case???