Where Superleague gets it's players from

[The Parksider]

Purely for interest, here’s a look at which junior RL areas super league clubs currently have sourced their professionals. As per Brian Mac’s comments this is the top 21 players in each SL squad (his core “first team squad”) Plenty of good player profiles about to work this out to be quite a good picture. Of course a few players have travelled a bit when in their formative years, but for the most of them leaving their home towns has come about when they signed pro. 231 players…..

 

Wigan 27

Leeds 17

Hull 15

Castleford 12

Saints 11

Fartown 11

Pontefract/Fev 8

Wakefield 7

Warington 6

Bradford 6

Halifax 5

Widnes 4

Oldham 4

West Cumbria 3

Salford/Manchester 3

Dewsbury 3

Barrow 3

 

Of course SL need to find the best players it can from anywhere it can so clubs will buy in overseas stars (Oz, NZ, France, pacific islands) who make up 69 players or 30%. They also get the odd players from RU or from outside the north especially from the days of London and Wales presence in Superleague. This includes 17 players. 

 

Most of this not surprising, the areas in which most RL is played are generally Super league areas, it’s still very much a northern game by geography and personnel.

 

Huddersfield seem to be doing quite well after all these years of Davey’s money. I find the Castleford numbers impressive but the financial struggles mean they mostly get taken away. Pontefract with Featherstone produces a lot of good players and this is where Hetherington has moved in and you can see why. What price a Cas in a new ground with Powell starting to keep those lads in that area. It would be fabulous.

 

HKR are the most heavily reliant on imports, reflecting Hudgells struggles getting the best Hull lads or finding them elsewhere, Widnes too have a similar reliability as they struggle to revive junior ARL in the town. Castleford use a lot of imports but of course the players they produce locally tend to keep leaving as above.

 

The least reliant on imports are Wigan and Huddersfield.

[WakefieldCityLoyal]

Is this fact or made up? List the players so we can all argue where they're from and which junior clubs they played etc. Surprised at Huddersfield as they are always signing kids from Wakefield clubs hence the Wakefield lads coaching their youth set up.

[zorquif]

I seem to remember that you did this either last year or the year before. Have the numbers 'imporved' in your opinion? I admit, I could search but you might have the figures closer to hand. 

[yanto]

Parky laad...Re check your stats because if your 2 from Barrow is wrong maybe just maybe some of the others are also wrong.

 

Off the top of my head and without doing an "in depth" search (which you obviously did)

Greg Richards St.Helens,

Ben Harrison Warrington and

Brad Singleton Leeds

are all Barrow lads born and bred and are all part of current SL squads as named on official club websites.Agreed some are maybe not up to date and you may have more information from sources 

 

Not nit picking and not a big difference to your stats but how many more "little" mistakes have you made ??

[The Parksider]

Parky laad...Re check your stats because if your 2 from Barrow is wrong maybe just maybe some of the others are also wrong.

 

Not nit picking and not a big difference to your stats but how many more "little" mistakes have you made ??

 

Yes I'm sure a few will be wrong so I welcome sensible corrections. Of course these won't make any great difference to the overall picture. I listed Ulverston as west Cumbria but yes it's south Cumbria and the lad is from Barrow island. I've made the changes above by Edit so that's one off west Cumbria....

[JoneslessBishop]

An excellent but of analysis Parky from what must have been a big piece of work to research each player. Shame

People want to shoot it down. I agree about your Cas analysis, and will be interesting to see if Hull KR can improve now they have access to a joint Hull academy.

Warrington seems very low given size of town and size of support. Are kids watching RL not playing it? Whilst Mirans money may have resulted in not many kids getting a chance at Wire, no reason other SL clubs shouldn't be benefitting?

We all know Manchester has never really produced RL players as they come from surrounding towns, but huge potential there that I'm sure we all hope Mancinians RL can develop.

[RSN]

For Barrow I guess you can include Will Maher at Cas he will likely be playing more next year. 

 

Morgan Knowles at Saints is from Ulverston (like Richards and Maher) and he will likely be in the first team within 2 years based on how much everyone is raving about him. Albeit Richards and Knowles both played for Barrow Island junior club. 

[chuffer]

Warrington seems very low given size of town and size of support. Are kids watching RL not playing it? Whilst Mirans money may have resulted in not many kids getting a chance at Wire, no reason other SL clubs shouldn't be benefitting?

 

 

I grew up in Widnes then Warrington....in both towns they played RL in schools (and both towns had decent school sides - particularly in Warrington with Beamont, Botler and the Gregs) but for some reason Widnes always seemed to have more amateur junior clubs....Warrington only ever really had Crosfields and Woolston (there may be more now) .....no idea why, you'd think that given its population there should be 3-4 times more teams than in Widnes

[PaulF]

Warrington: Crosfields, Latchford, Woolston, Rylands, Burtonwood, Culcheth & Golborne.

Widnes: Halton Farnworth, West Bank, Moorfield and St.Maries. Maries only have one or two age groups and Moorfield have only a few but seem to be regrouping.

[chuffer]

As I said, there may be more now - there certainly wasn't Latchford and Rylands around when I was growing up.....Golborne's a bit of a push geographically tbh!!....but yeh they've always been around (decent sides too) 

[ELBOWSEYE]

Rylands and Latchford have been around for decades, when I moved to Warrington in 1981 there was 4 o/a sides at Woolston 2 at the other 3 as well as junior set ups and few other clubs with little or no juniors.

On the number of Warrington born or brought up in the list it would be interestested how accurate it is.

[chuffer]

Rylands and Latchford have been around for decades,

 

maybe at o/a but we only ever played against Crossies and Woolston as kids...Golborne too but still think they're more Saints/Leigh area

[ELBOWSEYE]

maybe at o/a but we only ever played against Crossies and Woolston as kids...Golborne too but still think they're more Saints/Leigh area

I played and coached junior rugby for years in schools and at Crosfield and laportes. Both rylands and Latchford had juniors but would have some gaps in the age groups. The junior schools in Warrington were not interested in the eighties only seven took part in the league but more in the sevens, now it is a lot more with the work of barla coaches and Warrington wolves.

[BilboJeggings]

Really interesting piece of analysis.

 

It shows Wigan's pre-eminence in terms of producing super league players.

 

Out of interest, could you clarify in which totals you counted the following amateur clubs...

 

Drighlington
Elland
Kippax Knights
Leigh Miners / East Leigh
Normanton Knights
Oulton Raiders
York Acorn

 

I think that the idea of a professional club having a sphere of influence in terms of the geographic area (and consequently the amateur clubs) that they draw upon as a source of payers is diminishing.

 

My opinion is that there are now broadly 2 strategies for SL teams in terms of finding young talent...

 

1. Big clubs have a sophisticated youth systems and cast their nets wide. They work on the assumption that they have sufficient draw to hold onto any young players they choose to keep, which makes the investment they put into their scholarship and academy set ups worthwhile.

 

2. Smaller clubs are losing interest in developing their own players. Any top players that come through their system are likely to move on to a bigger club given the opportunity. Instead they use their more limited resources to build a team comprising a mixture of players that are not wanted by the top clubs and marginal NRL players, topped up with good (but not great) home grown talent.

 

While I'm not criticising either course of action (they are both reasonable responses to different situations), the effect of this over time must be to increase the gap in performance between the big and small clubs.

[Dave T]

Just having a quick glance at Warrington's squad - last year they used 27 players and 15 of them came through our Academy setup.

 

Now I accept that they don't all come from Warrington town, but then why on earth would we get loads of world class talent from small towns?

 

For example, are there any Warrington sports stars in other sports? Or Wigan, or St Helens?

 

The distance from the Halliwell Jones Stadium to:

Leigh - 9.3m

Wigan - 13m

St Helens - 12.9m

Widnes - 7.2m

Salford - 18m

 

Our clubs and towns are inter-twined. I grew up in Newton-le-Willows (St Helens) yet got involved in RL because of Warrington - I know many others are the same. 

Wigan will have a massive influence on people well outside of their town. So will Saints with all their success and so on. These aren't small isolated towns, if you travel from Warrington, you go directly into Newton or Golborne, into Leigh, Haydock, Ashton, Wigan etc. - they are a series of towns making what could be classed as a major city tbh.

 

It is interesting enough, but needs some context around it - tbh I find it disappointing and quite sad that the geographical footprint is so small. That said, as you acknowledged there are 17 players from elsewhere in the UK.

 

Personally, I have no real desire for my team to be packed full of lads from Warrington. I want English lads so that we get the benefit of a strong English team, and I want people playing RL in Warrington (and every other town in the UK) to help with fitness and to increase the player pool, but I'm ok if they never actually play for Wire.

 

The sooner these lists start to have Coventry, Gloucester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow on them, the game will be in a far stronger position.

[chuffer]

I played and coached junior rugby for years in schools and at Crosfield and laportes. Both rylands and Latchford had juniors but would have some gaps in the age groups. The junior schools in Warrington were not interested in the eighties only seven took part in the league but more in the sevens, now it is a lot more with the work of barla coaches and Warrington wolves.

 

at St Josephs in Widnes we played both League and Union - when I moved to Warrington the headmaster at St Gregs was Tom Brophy.......needless to say we were only offered League as an option  

[Gates1]

Did you count Normanton within the Wakefield figures? Assuming so, by my reckoning:

Ben Westwood

Ben Cockayne

Ryan Hampshire

Oliver Holmes

Jordan Thompson

(And probably more that I have missed) are from Normanton Knights meaning only 2 players came from the rest of Wakefield (with Cas/Ponte/Feath been identified as a separate entity).

Therefore, the Cas/Ponte/Feath/Normanton area of the Wakefield district has produced 25 players as oppose to 2 from the rest of the Wakefield District. Could be very interesting if Cas can get in a new stadia (boost income, etc!) and capitalise on the hotbed of talent on their doorstep!

[Trojan]

Did you count Normanton within the Wakefield figures? Assuming so, by my reckoning:

Ben Westwood

Ben Cockayne

Ryan Hampshire

Oliver Holmes

Jordan Thompson

(And probably more that I have missed) are from Normanton Knights meaning only 2 players came from the rest of Wakefield (with Cas/Ponte/Feath been identified as a separate entity).

Therefore, the Cas/Ponte/Feath/Normanton area of the Wakefield district has produced 25 players as oppose to 2 from the rest of the Wakefield District. Could be very interesting if Cas can get in a new stadia (boost income, etc!) and capitalise on the hotbed of talent on their doorstep!

I think it's very difficult to put players from Normanton/Cas/Fev/Ponte/Ferrybridge/Knottingley in any particular slot.  Normanton is very adjacent to both Fev and Cas.

[Cumbrian Fanatic]

Yes I'm sure a few will be wrong so I welcome sensible corrections. Of course these won't make any great difference to the overall picture. I listed Ulverston as west Cumbria but yes it's south Cumbria and the lad is from Barrow island. I've made the changes above by Edit so that's one off west Cumbria....

Good article and as you say a few will be wrong but West Cumbria should remain at 4 bona fide 1st team players :

Lee Mossop - Wigan

James Donaldson - HKR

Shaun Lunt - HKR

Kyle Amor - St Helens

[WakefieldCityLoyal]

I think it's very difficult to put players from Normanton/Cas/Fev/Ponte/Ferrybridge/Knottingley in any particular slot. Normanton is very adjacent to both Fev and Cas.

Notmy should be classed as a town on its own like Ponte but a lot of Wakefield players and support come from there. As for junior RL we don't have as many junio clubs as we used to but Stanley, eastmoor and crigglestone still going strong and apart from the private schools RL played in most Wakefield schools. We do have 2 SL coaches from Wakefield if that counts.

[Dave T]

I think it's very difficult to put players from Normanton/Cas/Fev/Ponte/Ferrybridge/Knottingley in any particular slot.  Normanton is very adjacent to both Fev and Cas.

Yeah, it was sort of my point too, these towns and villages are all overlapping.

 

My geography isn't brilliant, but maybe if this list was taken up a level to cover multiple towns it would give us a better indication, rather than drilling down to such a level.

[chuffer]

lol, so it would read "most SL players are from either the North-West or Yorkshire"......illuminating

[Dave T]

Purely for interest, here’s a look at which junior RL areas super league clubs currently have sourced their professionals. As per Brian Mac’s comments this is the top 21 players in each SL squad (his core “first team squad”) Plenty of good player profiles about to work this out to be quite a good picture. Of course a few players have travelled a bit when in their formative years, but for the most of them leaving their home towns has come about when they signed pro. 231 players…..

 

Wigan 27

Leeds 17

Hull 15

Castleford 12

Saints 11

Fartown 11

Pontefract/Fev 8

Wakefield 7

Warington 6

Bradford 6

Halifax 5

Widnes 4

Oldham 4

West Cumbria 3

Salford/Manchester 3

Dewsbury 3

Barrow 3

 

As per my last post, due to the almost overlapping of towns above, these could be categorised as:

North West (Granada Region) - 48 - supporting 4 clubs

Cumbria Region - 6 - supporting no clubs

West Yorkshire - 69 - supporting 4 clubs

East Yorkshire - 15 - supporting 2 clubs

Manchester Region - 7 - supporting 1 club

 

Other - France ??? - supporting 1 club

Other - Wales ??? - supporting 0 clubs

Other - Other England - supporting 0 club

[yanto]

Good article and as you say a few will be wrong but West Cumbria should remain at 4 bona fide 1st team players :

Lee Mossop - Wigan

James Donaldson - HKR

Shaun Lunt - HKR

Kyle Amor - St Helens

Glad I scrolled down before posting the same ;-)

[Padge]

Is the Wigan figure Wigan Borough or WIgan town?