Indeed. Everyone keeps harping on about bringing more younger players through but they have to remember they have to be able to play to super league standard. Some do and some don't. Most either go to NL1/NL2 clubs or look for a career elsewhere.

Wigan however at the moment have the most talent coming through that I have ever known in the super league era in terms of quality.

Bilko wrote:Just for prosperity here's a couple of Dean Bell era successes. (Been resurrecting old academy stuff recently on the site.) 2002 Junior Academy GF: Wigan 62 Hull 6 2003 Senior Academy GF: Bradford 30 Wigan 36 2005 Junior Academy GF: Leeds 22 Wigan 33 Reading those team it is clear that very few players (on both sides) make it to the top level - for both teams in each match only 1 or 2 players go on to make 1st team, seems like it is not a uniquely Wigan thing letting young players go. But that should hardly come as a surprise given that once a player makes it into the 1st team they could be there for several years so effectively blocking anyone below them. And the salalry cap ensure that squads cannot be very large. Still doens't stop the Wigan bashers from trying to use letting young players go as a stick to try and beat Wigan with.

Bilko wrote:Just for prosperity here's a couple of Dean Bell era successes. (Been resurrecting old academy stuff recently on the site.) 2002 Junior Academy GF: Wigan 62 Hull 6 2003 Senior Academy GF: Bradford 30 Wigan 36 2005 Junior Academy GF: Leeds 22 Wigan 33 Reading those team it is clear that very few players (on both sides) make it to the top level - for both teams in each match only 1 or 2 players go on to make 1st team, seems like it is not a uniquely Wigan thing letting young players go. But that should hardly come as a surprise given that once a player makes it into the 1st team they could be there for several years so effectively blocking anyone below them. And the salalry cap ensure that squads cannot be very large. Still doens't stop the Wigan bashers from trying to use letting young players go as a stick to try and beat Wigan with.

What many of those who perpetuate this myth conveniently forget is that, a few years ago, Wigan had a team stuffed with kids - and it paid no dividends at all.

I'm not sure if it was the season of the famous 75-0 defeat, or maybe the year we got trounced at Cardiff, but Eddie Hemmings, gleeful as ever at Wigan having problems, asked if we were a club in decline, and Phil Clarke replied something like: "It's not that they're a club in decline, it's just that their current crop of players are not good enough."

To me, that said it all.

Recruitment is a far more complex and sophisticated process than those who wish to 'promote youth at any cost' seem to realise.

Well most came through in 2003 when we had dreadful injuries and the reaching of the Grand Final made all seem rosy. But at the end of 2004 when literally ALL the experience Wigan had left at once, things went downhill and fast!

I sometimes wonder though that things could have been a lot different had Mike Gregory not fallen ill. A Grand Final and a Challenge Cup Final in his short time as coach, albeit both lost, was a remarkable achievement.

I think we'll always wonder what would have happened if Greg had stayed fit and healthy and kept the coaching job at Wigan. After the guy was first appointed, he could barely give an interiew without getting tearful - that was what coaching Wigan meant to him. Little wonder it bled into the players and they went on that incredible winning streak that took them from mid-table mediocrity to a Grand Final (before they were really ready for one, if we're honest).

Alas, it was not to be.

But it may be that RL historians will look back on that brief period, and identify the tragedy of Mike's sudden illness as being a key factor in Wigan's mid-2000s decline. It really knocked the club for six, in many different ways.

I personally think it was a key factor, we went from a club back on the up to a club spiralling out of control within a few short months.

It was THE factor. Everything went wrong once Greg fell ill. Its a tragedy that we will never know what we could have achieved.

Combined with the appointment of Millward, if someone could have built on the foundations laid rather than instantly destroy the moral and togetherness of the team, the story may well have been very different.

Until the day I found out he'd passed, I never stopped hoping that Greg was going to get better and come back. Sentimentality can easily cloud one's thinking, but I really do think he would have gone on to be one of the great Wigan coaches.