[Fantastic Mr Catpiss]

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:25 am  

this must be a different harvey livett to the one i watched playing first team

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 9:56 am  

Can't see the value of discussing a young player in public. Good coaches should encourage young players and Powell hardly did that. Always rated Livett but as a centre.

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 10:34 am  

morrisseyisawire wrote:

Keen as we are to have a team filled with talented academy products better to have a slow burn than a burn out - Harvey Livett springs to mind, a player who it could be argued was far more skilful than any of our backrowers aside from Currie, but who seemed to plateau very quickly.

This is a common pattern with our young players but I also wonder how much of it is people overrating them from a small sample size of games early on.
The more first team appearances a player has the more they reveal how good/bad they really are. With Livett, the more games he played the more the ratio of good games to anonymous games seemed to worsen. We had the same pattern with Kevin Penny, Rhys Evans and Dec Patton. These guys all had their own fans making excuses for them and blaming other people but they stopped producing good performances for us and in the end time runs out.

I think Livett is better than those other three and will be able to have a decent career as a middling SL level player. He's better than what we have now and could be a starter in our team. But I don't think he's starting quality for a team who wants to compete for GFs.

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:18 am  

sally cinnamon wrote:

This is a common pattern with our young players but I also wonder how much of it is people overrating them from a small sample size of games early on.

Fair points. I think with young players fans have a tendency to focus on the good games and ignore the bad at the start, thinking that the bad games will stop happening over time.

I think with Livett though we didn't give him enough time. He was poor in the CC Final (also got injured in the game before) but was only 21 at the time and only played for us 15 times after that, and a lot of those were from the bench.

Sometime after Longstaff breaks into the team on a regular basis, he will end up going through a bad patch. I feel you should stick with players for a time to see if they come through it. Dec Patton, for example, never did but at least we knew for sure he wasn't good enough.

Penny, Evans, and Patton all played over twice as many games for Warrington as Livett did.

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:17 pm  

Jack Napier wrote:

Fair points. I think with young players fans have a tendency to focus on the good games and ignore the bad at the start, thinking that the bad games will stop happening over time.

I think with Livett though we didn't give him enough time. He was poor in the CC Final (also got injured in the game before) but was only 21 at the time and only played for us 15 times after that, and a lot of those were from the bench.

Sometime after Longstaff breaks into the team on a regular basis, he will end up going through a bad patch. I feel you should stick with players for a time to see if they come through it. Dec Patton, for example, never did but at least we knew for sure he wasn't good enough.

Penny, Evans, and Patton all played over twice as many games for Warrington as Livett did.

He was in the first team squad for 3 years and in those three years played around 50% (45) of the games, I'd say that was long enough. At the end of the day he left of his own accord as he wanted first team rugby, I would have been delighted to see him stay as part of the squad, his versatility is valuable, but the fact is he wanted a first choice spot in the back row. The move was best for club and player, despite a drop in form of Currie and Holmes not living up to the billing yet, Livett isn't good enough in my mind to be a first choice back rower for a side with top 4 aspirations, whether he is better than Currie and Holmes presently isn't really the debate, he isn't good enough for a regular spot in the 13 at a top 4 club.

Be very interesting to see how he gets on at Huddersfield and whether he will be first choice - they have McQueen, Yates and Jones ahead of him in the 11-13 positions.

Re: Longstaff : Tue Jun 21, 2022 7:38 pm  

Jack Napier wrote:

Fair points. I think with young players fans have a tendency to focus on the good games and ignore the bad at the start, thinking that the bad games will stop happening over time.

I think with Livett though we didn't give him enough time. He was poor in the CC Final (also got injured in the game before) but was only 21 at the time and only played for us 15 times after that, and a lot of those were from the bench.

Sometime after Longstaff breaks into the team on a regular basis, he will end up going through a bad patch. I feel you should stick with players for a time to see if they come through it. Dec Patton, for example, never did but at least we knew for sure he wasn't good enough.

Penny, Evans, and Patton all played over twice as many games for Warrington as Livett did.

I agree there's that optimism bias where fans tend to extrapolate from early performances and assume the player will get better and also there's an inherent bias towards home grown players where everybody hopes that we will find the next Harris or Sculthorpe and so when a player is more of an "unwritten book" they tend to idealise them. Especially people who have watched them in Academy games where they have been dominating their peers and think it will translate into the pros.

Some young players benefit from a honeymoon period where the rest of the league doesn't have any film on them but after a while other coaches will start looking at them and any weaknesses start getting picked up and exploited and thats where players start to go through a bad patch. But more of our young players seem to get stuck in these bad patches than they do say at Wigan. I was always struck by Wigan especially in the Shaun Wane era, how their young players seem very pro-ready for their age, they play more like senior players earlier on and seem better equipped to handle things. They are coming in to first team with a very well rounded rugby education.

I tend to be a cynic when it comes to our hyped up youngsters. I've heard for 20 odd years how 'the future's bright' and we always have all these supposed super stars coming through so I am invariably less enthused by whoever is the latest hype train on this forum. I'm more biased towards our guys who have come through and done it over a long period of time. I feel like I view Chris Riley, Paul Wood and Mike Cooper more favourably than the consensus on this forum.

Re: Longstaff : Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:43 pm  

Don't forget St Helens. I think they,like Wigan, develop players far better than us and seem to let them learn on the job. But I can recall Wane dropping Williams for a lengthy period some years ago eventually bringing him back to make a big impact. We have a habit of trying to change players not using their strengths. Prime example is Joe Philbin - never a prop. Jack Johnson was/is as good as any of our current young backs.

Re: Longstaff : Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:25 pm  

Where is Jack Johnson now?

Re: Longstaff : Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:33 pm  

Douglas Black wrote:

Where is Jack Johnson now?

Newcastle Thunder

Re: Longstaff : Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:19 pm  

Well, I hope at least one of our current crop do better than that.