The problem these days with sport (the problem with modern life in general, in fact) is that people expect an instant return for their investment. The days of signing a player, nurturing him through an A team apprenticeship, into the first team and paitiently waiting for him to develop over time seem gone.
These days youngsters seem to have a very small window of opportunity to make a stellar rise to first-team, because the pressures on teams, clubs and coaches is to achieve success instantly, and long-term investment doesn't give short-term payback. You only have to look at the shameful way the A-team/Academy/dual-reg fiasco was conducted, with clubs selling off the future in favour of perennially failed short-term pipe dreams to see where the priority lies.
O'Brien may be 23 but he has never been afforded an extended run in the first team in the way Myler has. I was only half-joing when I said on another thread that going to the NRL for a year and changing his name to Joel O'Brien was the best way to get a guranteed run in the first team, and huge amounts of goodwill and leniency where poor form is concerned. A certain prop forward would certainly vouch for that.
Martin Crompton was always one of my favourite half-backs for Wires, but it was only when Brian Johnson got a grip of him as coach, squeezed an extra yard of pace out of him and gave him regular first team gametime that he realised his potential.
