Thought this was an interesting read, particularly in relation to our club.
Couldn't be further away from the way this club has For one, the club decided to move away from pathways and development almost completely for around a decade, only to turn face and shout to all and sundry that they had decided to become a development club again. But what did they actually do in that aspect? There didn't appear to be any communication between the various grades in recent years, and very little growth in any of our younger players as a result. The amount of raw and untested kids in our top 30 in recent years is testament to the lack of thought that's gone into it.
The article goes into great detail as to how detailed the Panthers development programs have been, obviously leading to incredible results. It's one thing to pool lots of kids into a district system, but another to turn talented kids into FG footballers.
Hopefully the new regime is a bit more clued up in this respect and we start to reap the rewards of our junior programs.
Hi all. I went to the pathways match at Kirkham oval. It was interesting to see some of the young kids on the clubs books although there were 4 key players missing who will be starting pre-season training with the NRL squad.
We were outclassed from the outset by what looked to me to be a seasoned Warrington outfit. Their forwards were especially strong and everyone seemed to know their role. Their kicker only missed one attempt and nailed a few from out wide. The Tiger cubs were willing with plenty of talk and had some decent defence around the middle at times. Unfortunately there were too many mistakes and the cubs were never able to build pressure. Tigers brought 22 players to the match so there was a lot of changes each quarter and not having played for 6 weeks probably wasn’t good for cohesion.
Best players for Tigers were the big prop (Jekope Sovau?) who had a barge over for our first try, and he then made a great line break and ran well into the back field with plenty of speed for a big lad before drawing the fullback to put one of the halves over. He was pretty willing in defence and spent 10 mins in the bin so one to watch. Other notables were the winger Jonah Watson – good hit ups but he never got any attacking ball, the 2 halves Tannous and Keppie had some nice skills looked and a couple of the forwards Ewan Xuereb and Jeremiah Leatigaga played well. I missed the last try but it was very late in the match.
I watched some of it on Facebook, pretty good summary mate.
Agree great update.
Regarding Ewan Xuerab, I know his grand father and have been watching him in the Maggie’s SG Ball where he was carving it up there before being promoted to the Flegg side. Very big in effort areas and if he adds a bit more weight will be a good prop, otherwise lock most likely.
We desperately need better mature players for State Cup. Playing our young guys up one or two age groups in that comp would be okay if they were among older harder players and getting some results but I worry that asking them to continually do the hard yards themselves and getting beat week in week out is not the best way to develop young talent.
