Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:13 am  

Best signing any team will make for next year IMO.

Apart from hull, I'd like to see Saints and Manu win a trophy as he really deserves to finish his career with a medal.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:57 am  

The whole idea of ramming a team full of ex-academy players is so naive, I can't believe people are still advocating it as a way of running a professional sports club as it's been proven time and again NOT TO WORK.

We were slipping dangerously into this mentality around 2009, when people were thinking the likes of Dean, Ashurst, Frodsham etc. were all going to make it and automatically slot in to replace the international standard players we were losing (Gilmour, Longy, Sculthorpe, Talau, etc.)

In reality, although these players can come in and do a solid enough job without letting anyone down, the vast majority of them aren't of the required quality to sustain a continued challenge at the top of Super League. Not only that, but throwing them all in at the same time is poisonous to their development, and the better players who do have a chance of being Saints/international class, the Lomax/Jones/Makinsons of this world need experienced, battle-hardened pros to play alongside.

It's all about squad balance so I'm pleased with the signing of Manu as he gives us something we don't have. If we lose Dixon, so be it. We're not very often wrong about the youngsters we let go and, although he's shown some promise, there's been nothing to suggest he'll ever be as effective a player as Manu is.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:22 am  

(Saint) wrote:

The whole idea of ramming a team full of ex-academy players is so naive, I can't believe people are still advocating it as a way of running a professional sports club as it's been proven time and again NOT TO WORK

I agree and been saying same thing for long long time.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:32 am  

(Saint) wrote:

The whole idea of ramming a team full of ex-academy players is so naive, I can't believe people are still advocating it as a way of running a professional sports club as it's been proven time and again NOT TO WORK.

Only the most self-evidently clueless loony in the world could ever think that this would be a good idea.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:34 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

Only the most self-evidently clueless loony in the world could ever think that this would be a good idea.

The is one on here, believe me!

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:09 am  

St pete wrote:

The is one on here, believe me!

Actually, given the number of different accounts said individual uses, there are many

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:35 pm  

The Ideal situation would be to have one top class junior per year from the academy. 3 or 4 in a year never works ( unless your name is Alex Ferguson ).

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:26 pm  

I think you can do alot with kids actually and Wigan are a prime example of this. The question is one of quality, not youth, homegrown, imports, aging, etc.

The advantage of a youth player coming through would be that they are relatively cheaper over the long run and that in playing for their hometown side, you can engender some of that patriotic spirit that someone coming in would not naturally have which all other things being equal should provide some advantage.

But over all this comes quality, if the quality is not good enough you can be as cheap and spirit filled as you like you will not acheive what those with quality can. If we had a Willie Manu at Saints who we were throwing out in favour of a Willie Manu from Hull then there would be a good arguement that we are not doing well by the homegrown players, but we don't, so it's not an arguement.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:49 pm  

Top Saint wrote:

The Ideal situation would be to have one top class junior per year from the academy. 3 or 4 in a year never works ( unless your name is Alex Ferguson ).

...and the Man Utd. situation sums up the fundamental problem with relying on a youth policy too heavily very nicely. 20 years ago they produced Sharp, Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, Butt and the Nevilles all at about the same time which formed the basis of the team that dominated the league for a decade, but during the rest of that decade only really Brown came through after that.

No matter how good a youth setup any team has and how much talent they have it's fundamentally a roll of the dice how many of those young players will ultimately make it. ManU lucked out by getting half a dozen all at once but the odds against that happening are remote as proved by the many barren years from ManU's youth policy afterwards - any team that throws all it's eggs in the youth policy basket is doomed to mediocrity and failure unless they get very lucky. A balance between as much quality and experience as you can get your hands on combined with a good smattering of the best quality youth you can get is the way to go for any team.

Re: Willie Manu : Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:55 pm  

bewareshadows wrote:

I think you can do alot with kids actually and Wigan are a prime example of this.

You're right, Wigan's kids look great around an established core of experienced players like O'Loughlin, Finch, Leuluai, Carmont. Without these players they'd be a good side but not great (which is the position we're in now.)

It would be utterly ludicrous to suggest that once those players move on, Wigan should just replace from their youth system and expect the fringe players in their squad to magically lift their performance 10-20% and become the team leaders without the overall teams performance dropping. Yet it seems to me that's essentially what people who are criticising Manu's signing are saying.

Andrew Dixon will probably never be as effective a player as Willie Manu. The fact that he's X years younger, British and came through the ranks doesn't matter one bit. You take 2 years of class from Willie and then look to replace him as well as possible in 2 years. That's the way it has to be and I'll take that over 10 years of dependability and never letting anyone down.