Done some maths using the club website and I make the average age of our 17 player squad tonight at 24 years & 8 months.

And to be honest I don't think the club is getting much recognition for the quality, and number, of British youngsters we have emerging, many of whom have come through the ranks.

In the Leeds game on SKY, the CC game last week and the BBC commentary again tonight reference was made to the numbers of players the opposition were missing, but no such mention of our missing players, nor in particular how the rich vein of form and results we've produced during those absences has been achieved with a large core of young lads .

Still, the world can't turn it's back on us for ever.

We are definitely overlooked in regards to our youth but they will get their day in the sun, we just need to kick on from here and get some silverware!

IIRC our under 19s are top of their competition and the under 16s are unbeaten.

The 16's lost a couple at the start of the season to Leeds and Wigan, but only by 10 and 4 points.

The 19's have only lost to Leeds away (we then beat them at home)

I'm delighted to see our young players coming up to SL level after watching them at U19's. They never look out of place either.

Smith needs to sort this out; you can't win anything with kids.

We have always given youth and British players a chance... Plenty of times we have put young teams out and teams with Zero or 1 overseas players on the pitch..

It's just gets ignored by the sky cronies everyone else in the media for that matter... Yet when Wigan (the team that used to buy everyone back in the day) do it they get a Boots n All special done on them and it's all over the back page of the paper..!

I am quite happy that this aspect of our club is under the radar in comparison to those other clubs as the pressure and level of expectancy can be controlled by the management and not to any extent by the media.

A few "he's the next big this or that" might not always be welcome let's just carry on what we are doing happy in the knowledge that we have a chance to shape the way that future competitive Wire teams are put together.

It's about balance surely? I'm not desperate to see an all home grown team just a good proportion that shows we are a club where a youngster will get a top quality environment to develop and a chance to shine

I stand corrected

It isn't a media conspiracy that they focus on the youth players of Leeds, Wigan and Saints and ignore ours. It's a reflection of reality: those clubs have produced a lot of very good players who have had long and successful SL careers, sometimes at other clubs. Warrington haven't. We have brought a lot of young players through to the first team that have had 30-50 or so games and then faded away as they never really made it. We haven't produced internationals.

Lets rack our brains and think of the young players we have produced who have been genuine top SL players since 2000.

1. Paul Wood
2. Chris Riley
3. Mike Cooper

I would put Ben Harrison in there but as we signed him from Barrow at age 17 or so its pushing it to claim him as a Warrington produced player.

There have been a lot in the category of "good enough for SL but not good enough to succeed at a top club": guys like Ian Sibbit, Paul Noone, Steve Pickersgill, Gary Hulse

Now if we were to do that exercise for who Leeds, Wigan and Saints have produced in the same time, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a better list than above. In fact even the likes of Wakefield and Cas would probably beat us. Wakefield I can think of two straight off the top of my head: Ellis and Westwood.

Of course the response to this will be, as it ever was, yes but the [icurrent crop[/i of Academy players is really special and you will get some top players out of that. We will just have to wait and see on that front. But until we have produced a series of genuine top players not just three in a decade then you will have to excuse the media for not bracketing us with Leeds, Saints and Wigan.

Pretty certain that Ben Harrison came through our youth system, whilst he hails from Barrow his only professional club is Warrington.

Ben Harrison played in our U16's and came from Barrow Island, so you can certainly say he came through our Scholarship set up.

But the point in general about Leeds, Saints and Wigan is certainly true, we have struggled in the past to bring through first team players from our youth system. Since 2005 we have handed 26 debuts to kids from our own set up, but only about 3-4 of those have become permanent fixtures. It is early days, but the ex 2011 U20's are now coming into the first team and certainly some of them will be here in 3-4 years time, so good progress has been made. Plenty of work still to do though.