Cockerill talks about young players

[RagingBull]

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Richa ... ign=buffer

[Doghashadhisday]

Sorry but that is just the rantings of a happy clapper who doesn't know anything about rugby and obviously hasn't been watching the game as long as some on here. He probably doesn't pay to watch the Tigers and therefore his opinions are invalid anyway!

[MurphysLaw]

One particular poster usually highjacks any thread going to be critical of the club on this topic....I can't believe the lack of response. Must be an IT fault or something similar

[L Smith]

One particular poster usually highjacks any thread going to be critical of the club on this topic....I can't believe the lack of response. Must be an IT fault or something similar

Does anyone have 4071's next of Kin's contact details?

[mike]

Oh well - back to Crane et al next week - so much for the brave new world of No 8s who can drive and off load , and centres who have pace .

[RagingBull]

Oh well - back to Crane et al next week - so much for the brave new world of No 8s who can drive and off load , and centres who have pace .

Well Pearce was injured during the game, so may be out anyway.

[Spicer]

I think Roberts and Catchpole should start in the centres against Gloucester. They have played well for two consecutive matches now, which is more than our centres have done this season. Plus Goneva would be back where he belongs, on the wing.

[4071]

due to popular demand, here I am.

I've read that article and several like it every season for the last few years. I could write the next one for him, if he likes. Saves him having to repeat himself.

[4071]

But the task of bringing academy graduates through into the first team is becoming harder and harder.

The sheer physicality of the modern-day game is one issue. Making the lads strong enough to deal with the hits you have to take is hard work when they are still developing their bodies and coming out of their teens.

Valid point. Almost makes you wonder how other clubs can manage it.

We also have to pick exactly the right time to put the younger players into a first-team squad. Everyone wants their academy prospects to get game-time and I am no different – but they also want us to win. If I played a young team three weeks on the trot and we suffered three defeats, nobody would be praising me for continuing their development.
They would be criticising me for being naïve and will say I should have picked more experience.

Actually, I've read variants on this hundreds of times, but haven't actually seen any criticism of Cockerill for developing young players. Always quite the opposite.

Also, he seems - like so many on here - to have the default belief that young players WILL lose you games through lack of experience. No thought that they might have the talent to win you games, and no concession that even experienced players will lose you games. He's deeply in the mindset that young players can only lose games for you. So no wonder he's scared of picking them and scared of being criticised.

Much better to pick his experienced players, lose and then get criticised.

That’s the way it works. So they have to be integrated at the right time and with experienced players around them.

Yes. Which makes his preferred philosophy of picking 15 experienced/imported players in every Premiership/European match and then throwing a bunch of kids together in the LV Cup, before dismissing thwem because they lost, quite baffling.

Sometimes, you know it is a risk to play them. Take a young prop like Fraser Balmain. He started that defeat at Bath near the beginning of the season because we had so many injuries. He had a bad day at the office, as we all did. Yet he learned a lot from that day and his game has come on in leaps and bounds this season. We took short-term pain for long-tern gain then. Getting the balance right is crucial.

And no doubt Cockerill was roundly criticised for picking the young player and developing him, as he said he would be? Right...? Or not...?

There is also an argument for signing players who have had a year or two development at other clubs. That way, other clubs have played them when they have come out of their academies and they have had two years to develop, making mistakes and, crucially, learning from them. By the time you sign them, they have had some of the rough edges knocked off.

Valid again. A few more years of development at Tigers and they can move on again.

Look at Graham Kitchener and Jack Roberts – they are just what I am talking about.

Roberts? How many Premiership games has he played since being signed in a position where we are short of options?

Oh, yeah...

That said, we are always keen to develop our academy and the players it produces. Will Owen, Jake Farnworth and Charlie Beckett are all away with the England Under-20s squad this week, which shows how well they are doing.

The list of Tigers U20 internationals is very long. How are Harry Rudkin and Henry Purdy from last saeason doing?

We are proud to have bought through a stream of young players like Manu Tuilagi, Tom Croft, Ben Youngs, Tom Youngs, Dan Cole and, more recently, Sam Harrison and Balmain.

Well done, you brought through Manu Tuilagi to continue the traditions of your predecessors. A "force of nature" who would probably still have made it to international rugby if he'd been raised by squirrels and never seen a rugby ball in his life.

Sam Harrison and Fraser Balmain are still on the fringes, and probably reaping the benefits of a host of injuries (rather than a planned development programme). But at least they are relative successes. That should be enough for me to joint he Happy Clappers, I guess...

[MurphysLaw]

[quote="4071"][quote]But the task of bringing academy graduates through into the first team is becoming harder and harder.

The sheer physicality of the modern-day game is one issue. Making the lads strong enough to deal with the hits you have to take is hard work when they are still developing their bodies and coming out of their teens.[/quote]
Valid point. Almost makes you wonder how other clubs can manage it.


[quote]We also have to pick exactly the right time to put the younger players into a first-team squad. Everyone wants their academy prospects to get game-time and I am no different – but they also want us to win. If I played a young team three weeks on the trot and we suffered three defeats, nobody would be praising me for continuing their development.
They would be criticising me for being naïve and will say I should have picked more experience.[/quote]

Actually, I've read variants on this hundreds of times, but haven't actually seen any criticism of Cockerill for developing young players. Always quite the opposite.

Also, he seems - like so many on here - to have the default belief that young players WILL lose you games through lack of experience. No thought that they might have the talent to win you games, and no concession that even experienced players will lose you games. He's deeply in the mindset that young players can only lose games for you. So no wonder he's scared of picking them and scared of being criticised.

Much better to pick his experienced players, lose and then get criticised.


[quote]That’s the way it works. So they have to be integrated at the right time and with experienced players around them.[/quote]
Yes. Which makes his preferred philosophy of picking 15 experienced/imported players in every Premiership/European match and then throwing a bunch of kids together in the LV Cup, before dismissing thwem because they lost, quite baffling.


[quote]Sometimes, you know it is a risk to play them. Take a young prop like Fraser Balmain. He started that defeat at Bath near the beginning of the season because we had so many injuries. He had a bad day at the office, as we all did. Yet he learned a lot from that day and his game has come on in leaps and bounds this season. We took short-term pain for long-tern gain then. Getting the balance right is crucial.[/quote]
And no doubt Cockerill was roundly criticised for picking the young player and developing him, as he said he would be? Right...? Or not...?


[quote]There is also an argument for signing players who have had a year or two development at other clubs. That way, other clubs have played them when they have come out of their academies and they have had two years to develop, making mistakes and, crucially, learning from them. By the time you sign them, they have had some of the rough edges knocked off.[/quote]
Valid again. A few more years of development at Tigers and they can move on again.


[quote]Look at Graham Kitchener and Jack Roberts – they are just what I am talking about. [/quote]
Roberts? How many Premiership games has he played since being signed in a position where we are short of options?

Oh, yeah...



[quote]That said, we are always keen to develop our academy and the players it produces. Will Owen, Jake Farnworth and Charlie Beckett are all away with the England Under-20s squad this week, which shows how well they are doing.[/quote]
The list of Tigers U20 internationals is very long. How are Harry Rudkin and Henry Purdy from last saeason doing?


[quote]We are proud to have bought through a stream of young players like Manu Tuilagi, Tom Croft, Ben Youngs, Tom Youngs, Dan Cole and, more recently, Sam Harrison and Balmain.[/quote]

Well done, you brought through Manu Tuilagi to continue the traditions of your predecessors. A "force of nature" who would probably still have made it to international rugby if he'd been raised by squirrels and never seen a rugby ball in his life.

Sam Harrison and Fraser Balmain are still on the fringes, and probably reaping the benefits of a host of injuries (rather than a planned development programme). But at least they are relative successes. That should be enou
gh for me to joint he Happy Clappers, I guess...[/quote]

Hooray!!!!

[RagingBull]

Look at Graham Kitchener and Jack Roberts – they are just what I am talking about.

Roberts? How many Premiership games has he played since being signed in a position where we are short of options?

Oh, yeah...

I take it you didn't know that Roberts broke his cheekbone during his baabaas game and was only match fit about 3 weeks before the Saints LV cup game.

Which was mainly European games anyway of which he would be allowed to play as he wasn't in the Europe squad.

Not saying he would of played but he couldn't even if they wanted to.

[johnthegriff]

Of course Fraser Balmain & Sam Harrison have their way into the first team blocked by Academy graduates Dan Cole and Ben Young.
Many of the Cocker critics also would have preferred the mature signing Thomas Waldrom over the Tigers developed Jordan Crane (signed as a young prospect from Leeds).
Of course some prospects will move on and inevitably some we will regret letting go but we cannot keep everybody all we can ask is that the ones retained or signed are on the whole an improvement on the ones released.

[4071]

Funny thing is that I wouldn't even have commented on this if I wasn't being summoned like the Candyman by people who insist that I be present on each and every thread.

I have made my points, and I know that a lot of people disagree. I won't change my mind on those until I see actual evidence that changes my mind. A bundle of well-worn soundbites repeated from previous years does not equate to actual change. Especially when the actual HEADLINE is that it's getting HARDER to introduce the academy players into the team at a time when other clubs are finding it easier and when we have so many injuries that there can be no better time to do it.

[kornboy130]

I'm inclined to agree with 4071 - our youth promotion policy hasn't been good enough in recent times. Cockers himself highlights the benefits of placing a player in to the fray surrounded by experience but we haven't done that recently - I'd hoped we'd got better at it this season and maybe we will when injuries permit but as 4071 has said it seems to be senior players and then junior team for the LV - mixing this up would be preferred (not from an LV perspective naturally but a long term progression perspective).

[johnthegriff]

4071 is not wrong when he says that not enough young players in recent years have graduated from the Academy to the first team. Cocker is right when he says that although many have it is not easy to gauge the right time. The physicality of the Premiership is such that a the average teenager or twenty year old could be in danger of serious injury if exposed too early. Cocker gives a list of players who have made that transition including Manu who had the necessary physique at an early age. 4071 gives a list of players who have moved on without in his opinion being given the opportunity, most of them will have been assessed by the coaching staff as not being unlikely to oust those ahead of them for their position during the course of their next contract. George Ford of course was special circumstances.
The club seem to have recognised that the supply line has lacked something in recent years and have made changes, time will tell if this is for the better, it will not be overnight.