Roy Haggerty wrote:
Not sure whether it's a coaching challenge so much as a scouting challenge.
What I wonder about is our inability to find big backs. Wigan seem to have a production line of 6'0+ athletes who can shift a bit too : Burgess, Manfredi, Gelling are all considerably bigger than anyone we have in the backs. Leeds also have no problem producing or procuring big lads for the threequarters and fullback. Yet our backs production line seems to be based in Lilliput. Makinson and Swift are tiny, as is Lomax. Percival is a slip of a lad, and even Jones is hardly huge, despite playing second row a bit. None of this would mater, of course, if they were fast as whippets with the evasive skills of a particularly slippery eel, but they're not. They're moderately fast, small guys. And as RL is such a physical game, perhaps we shouldn't be overly surprised that a lot of our small backs have spent a fair bit of time injured : Wheeler, Lomax, Percival.
As someone born and bred in St Helens, I recognise that many of my fellow Sintelliners may be more broad than tall, but at 6 foot I wasn't a freak ! Yet even our homegrown forwards tend to be on the small side. Beefy, but short. Clough-clones. So where are the big lads coming up through the youth teams ? Where are our equivalents of Burgess and Manfredi, Hardaker and Watkins ? Get some size in there !
Not sure I agree with this.
Gelling, he's a terrible back, so not sure I'd be longing for players his size in the centres. He's a back rower.
Manfredi? He's not particularly big. In fact according to the respective club websites Swift is taller and Makinson only 3cm shorter.
Makinson being shorter than Swift doesn't make him any less effective as a winger. Turner is the biggest of the lot that you don't mention, but young Jack Ashworth is taller than him. Carney is probably the most powerful wing in the league and he's shorter than all of them.
I don't think we have an issue producing backs at all TBH. We could put out a back 5 of Lomax, Makinson, Percival, Jones, Swift - could any other teams in SL put out a better home grown back line from players at their club?
As for small forwards, Greenwood is enormous, Savelio is only a couple of cm shorter etc.