Re: Former players : Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:06 pm  

nadera78 wrote:

(FB), Dixon, Channing, Sarginson, Caro, (SO), (SH), Clubb, (Hooker), Krasniqi, Cook, (2Row), LMS. + Bishay, D. Griffin, Dollapi, G. Griffin.

That would be a very interesting 17. With McMeeken, Bryan, Lovell, MCB, Macani, JOC, Wicks filling the squad.

Such a shame that the game down here is finally producing players in good numbers and yet it's all too late for this club.

The players weren't necessarily produced too late. The junior development has been a real positive for some time. What the club has lacked is the strategy and management to use this to advance the club. Phil Jones should have been given an offer he couldn't refuse. Instead we kept the stooges on the payroll.

Re: Former players : Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:25 pm  

jbuzza wrote:

The players weren't necessarily produced too late. The junior development has been a real positive for some time. What the club has lacked is the strategy and management to use this to advance the club. Phil Jones should have been given an offer he couldn't refuse. Instead we kept the stooges on the payroll.

This^^^^^^^^^^with bells on!

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:09 am  

jbuzza wrote:

The players weren't necessarily produced too late. The junior development has been a real positive for some time. What the club has lacked is the strategy and management to use this to advance the club. Phil Jones should have been given an offer he couldn't refuse. Instead we kept the stooges on the payroll.

Funny thing is, is that I hear from over here for years people saying the young players don't know the basics.

So who was responsible for training the kids coming through?

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 6:10 am  

Rooster Booster wrote:

Funny thing is, is that I hear from over here for years people saying the young players don't know the basics.

So who was responsible for training the kids coming through?

They seem to have a better idea of the basics when they play at junior level.

Are you saying our player development has not been a positive ? Can you name an area of the club that has been more successful over recent years ?

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 9:59 am  

Rooster Booster wrote:

Funny thing is, is that I hear from over here for years people saying the young players don't know the basics.

So who was responsible for training the kids coming through?

Londoners are always going to develop at a different rate to northerners simply because RL is so new to people down here, our kids just don't have the "RL immersion" that a kid in Wigan or Leeds enjoys. Up there the game is discussed all the time, parents have played or at least watched the game themselves, all of that impacts upon the game awareness of young players.

I'd also suggest that some coaches find it easier to work with older players than youngsters who may be more unpredictable and in need of different things. One of the criticisms I held of Tony Rea in his previous spell was his treatment of younger players. Darrell Griffin has had a good career in SL, James Brooks likewise in union, Iain Morrison would have been a very good squad player for us, even Joe Mbu was treated poorly, and there were others too, but none of them lasted long at London. I always got the feeling Rea found it difficult to work with them and didn't have the patience needed. I think we're seeing the same right now with Mike Bishay who was dumped to the Skolars a week after winning MofM. Drinkwater has been dire and Farrar is never a stand off, but both of them seem locked into the team.

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:41 am  

I think we get a bit carried away by any young London players that make it to SL. There's only a couple of players Id say are really good enough to play in a top 4 squad. Clubb and LMS. Nearly all other players have had too many weaknesses in their games. Maybe Mbu was pretty solid in his position too. Dixon and Sarginson are talked about very positively but I'm not sure either have the all round game they should have at their stage. I like watching Channing but Cas fans don't rate him despite his tries, claiming he lacks game awareness ('runs around like a headless chicken') and I like the look of Bishay but Rea obviously sees a problem there too.

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 12:06 pm  

Tre Cool wrote:

I think we get a bit carried away by any young London players that make it to SL. There's only a couple of players Id say are really good enough to play in a top 4 squad. Clubb and LMS. Nearly all other players have had too many weaknesses in their games. Maybe Mbu was pretty solid in his position too. Dixon and Sarginson are talked about very positively but I'm not sure either have the all round game they should have at their stage. I like watching Channing but Cas fans don't rate him despite his tries, claiming he lacks game awareness ('runs around like a headless chicken') and I like the look of Bishay but Rea obviously sees a problem there too.

Two things - firstly, a lot of what you've said about those players is down to them developing later because they come from an area with no history of producing players. They need handling in a different way because they're simply never going to be comparable to northerners at 20 years of age. Secondly, forget top 4 clubs, we're bottom of the league and every single one of the Londoners now playing up north would walk into our team.

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:46 pm  

nadera78 wrote:

Two things - firstly, a lot of what you've said about those players is down to them developing later because they come from an area with no history of producing players. They need handling in a different way because they're simply never going to be comparable to northerners at 20 years of age. Secondly, forget top 4 clubs, we're bottom of the league and every single one of the Londoners now playing up north would walk into our team.

A lot of the players coming through now started playing at a young age, so what's the problem? If junior RL isn't tough enough down there to produce SL quality players then we have a problem that needs solving, they need to play against more northern juniors more often or we need to improve the standard of junior RL in the south. You can't just shrug your shoulders and say 'we can't compete we're southern'.

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:40 pm  

We can compete at schools age. In the Cup Final curtain raiser last year a southern school absolutely battered the Castleford opponents.

Re: Former players : Fri Apr 04, 2014 6:01 pm  

Tre Cool wrote:

A lot of the players coming through now started playing at a young age, so what's the problem? If junior RL isn't tough enough down there to produce SL quality players then we have a problem that needs solving, they need to play against more northern juniors more often or we need to improve the standard of junior RL in the south. You can't just shrug your shoulders and say 'we can't compete we're southern'.

I didn't say that in the slightest. What I said was that because RL is an alien sport to the kids down here they take longer to develop - which can be seen in something like game awareness which cannot be taught but comes from experience - and that needs to be taken into account when evaluating a 20 year old Londoner V his northern counterparts.