Puja wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2024 12:45 pm
Epaminondas Pules wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2024 11:53 am
Tigers academy leavers:
Leicester Tigers Senior Academy 2023/2024 Farewells
Jacob Cusick, Tiger #2361
Oliver Crane, Tiger #2417
Sam Edwards, Tiger #2363
Morgan Meredith, Tiger #2370
Simon Koroiyadi, Tiger #2371
I'm worried about the Tigers academy - upsetting seeing our England age-group contributions dwindling and players who were seen as promising drift away, like Cusick and Koroiyadi.
Starting to feel like it did about 12-13 years ago, when we brought through the last cadre of Youngs/Manu/Ford et al and then just shut up shop for the longest while. There were players talked up as being good, but they never came to anything and left the same way some of these are going - we produced the occasional Henry Purdys and Alex Lewingtons for other clubs, but nothing for ourselves and no further superstars.
You're fairly plugged in to these things - is it just a bad run or have we cut back on academy work and talent finding like we did 12 years ago?
Puja
I think there is a mixture of factors. I don't think the quality post the U18 double winning years has been as good. Some snippets, like Woodward, but none of them really getting / forcing opportunities. Carnduff looks a level above some of those before him. When you look across the senior academy there's not a huge amount in there to get excited about. Now there's a bit of a mix in that too. The academy structure is very focussed on certain invidivuals, with others being sen as squad fill. In Woody's age group there were a number of very talented lads, but they were not earmarked as being 'special' and didn't get the same attention. A couple of them told me that within a few weeks you knew largely that you were fodder or in the small special group.
From what I hear I think we are going through another little down cycle. Whether that comes back up quicker than last time is up for grabs. To do so we have to invest in the DPP and junior academy, but we also have to play players. In the last shit spell we largely bought into journeymen or squad fill in favour of trying youth, and it failed spectacularly (on both fronts). I'm kind of getting a feel that we're just nudging down the buy before build route. Maybe gut feel, but from noise from the DPP camps and academy performance all does not appear to be rosey / joined up / strategic.
These things do have a habit of going in cycles mind. You're going to get bumper years and fallow periods. It is the same across the board usually. Very rarely you get a golden age group, like the 2011 U20 finalists. But, and it is a big but, I am seeing the conveyor belt across the academies really start to flourish. I've talked about us being on the verge of another golden period, and Tigers don't seem to be fully at that party. And we're by no means alone in our current place. In fact some clubs have largely failed to produce much at all, let alone three current internationals with over 50 caps between them at the age of 22/23.
That's a long winded way of saying 'dunno'
