Quote ="karetaker"Think the issue with Patton and O’Brien etc was back in the day as a club we never shown faith unlike Wigan, Saints etc. But now with our club going in the right direction and using and looking after our youngsters better think they would have had a better chance here.'"
Not sure I agree, Ben Currie being the case in point, he was a regular first teamer at 18, he was clearly always going to be good enough and the club backed him. To a lesser extent, Philbin got plenty of game time as a younger player as well, he was always going to be a decent SL player.
Fact is for a long time the players coming through weren't good enough to be given the opportunity to step up.
On O'Brien and Patton specifically, they played 60 odd and 100 odd games for us, so they were given plenty of opportunity I think. O'Brien was the better of the two, but he wasn't good enough IMO to be considered a starter for a 'top 4 club'.