The Lads : Fri Oct 30, 2020 8:29 am
As a long time fan hand on heart I can say that in all my time not much has changed at Wakefield.No new stadium.
Still skint.
Above all no silverware.
One thing though has and it may eventually help solve the others.
It started with Tom, then came Jowitt and Crowther, then Batchelor and most recently Croft and Kershaw.
It’s early days for the last two but the others are all now coming into their pomp. When was the last time Trinity created and more importantly retained four players who would get in most SL teams? Certainly not during SL.
In the past we used what we did find as cash cows. What’s worse is we often squandered that windfall on past it overpriced Aussie or similar English players. Chasing some daft notion that we could buy success rather than create it.
Most top teams tend to depend on a core of home grown players. They are not always the stars but they are usually the engine.
We have that now and it’s shown in recent games.
My message FWIW to CC and MC is this. Concentrate on these players and those coming up. When we do look outside the camp it must be for absolute quality or good honest players who can fill a role that our youngsters just can’t.
There is so much young talent in this area and the really determined ones will always gravitate to a club where they know they will get a chance. A club with a template for getting them in the first team as soon as they are ready.
People may dig at CC for his recruitment and to be honest I still think he over rates foreign players but compared to some he’s a paragon of virtue.
Moan all you like about Max, had this been any other Trinity regime he’d be at Fev by now. Ditto Crowther and Batch who may have ended up at HKR or worse.
Johnstone would be a Leeds player by now. Even the good Aussies would be gone. Tupes would be with TJ and Tanginoa would have been flipped to Cas or Hudds as would some of the others.
Of course some of that may still happen, money talks and loyalties stretch so far.
However if we can keep that core we can keep building. We may lose TJ a player who IMHO is too big for SL not just Trinity but I see no reason why we can’t retain the rest.
It’s been a rare joy to see these young players develop.
Let’s keep building, please.