goreyguy wrote:LeRouxIsPHat wrote:Wasn't Luke Fitz famously just in the academy for one day before getting a pro deal?
Agree with Hugo about it opening a can of worms to offer him one straight off the bat but I'd have thought it was obvious that a regular academy place wouldn't cut it for this guy and I know of others clubs who were after him too so I would hope that Leinster realised that and weren't stubborn about the type of contract on offer.
It's fairly worrying that he's been targeted from such a young age, I wonder what kind of scouting processes they have in place? Who knows, maybe he'll end up coming back but I'd guess that if he's not overly fussed on rugby now then he never will be. There are guys like Jack Kelly and even Dardis who will be relieved at this news and hopefully they can take their opportunities now.
Don't think Leinster have so much talent in the back three that Nash would have blocked anyone. Leinster need all the talent they can get in those positions.
On the topic of Dardis, does he even have a contract for next season with Leinster?
The AFL have a whole scouting setup for 16-18 year old GAA players. Tadhg Kennelly is in charge of it. Hopefully it will be a Ciaran Kilkeny situation and he comes home pretty quickly but somehow I doubt it. Shame as Nash had the potential to be a real star player from the club game in the province ala Sean O'Brien.
I think it's a really interesting topic of discussion.
Personally, were I in the position to make the call to offer Nash a development contract straight out of school [given the competition from the AFL] I'd probably do it. But I can see why a good few reasonable objections to doing so, and if you're the guy in the organisation who has to put his reputation on the line, certainly within the organisation, making the decision carries a load of risk.
Leinster are a pretty conservative organisation in a most ways they go about their business. In some cases that's a good thing, in some cases a bad thing. I tend to think that the conservatism hurts a little when it comes to academy intake. I would be of the opinion that we could offer three or four more slots [say at an extra expense of €30-40k] and have a few more punts.
Seven or eight years of evidence has shown that there's going to be a degree of wastage/natural selection in the academy. Not everyone is going to make it through to a senior contract, for any number of reasons. Some will make it through to a development contract and not get a second contract. That's just the way it goes, and it seems to go that way regardless of background, whether the players come through the clubs or the schools.
So in some ways I don't think it should be a big deal if you take a punt on bringing a guy into the academy and it doesn't pay off ... because sometimes you can take in a 'blue chip' prospect [for want of a better phrase] - five schools cup teams on the trot, representative teams all the way up etc. – and it doesn't pay off either. In some ways I've become pretty sanguine about who 'makes it' and who doesn't 'make it'. It's not always a reflection on the player's ability, or a reflection of the rugby knowledge or judgment of the people who selected said player for the academy. There are loads of factors that come into it.
I would totally have taken the punt we did on Stewart Maguire, for example. At that stage it seemed like his build was where tighthead was going – absolutely massive, left-tackle proportion players. It didn't pan out for him at Leinster and he never played a competitive game for us. On the other hand, Conor Gilsenan never played a competitive game for us either, and he was a total schoolboy legend – big rugby school alumnus, cup campaigns galore, Irish Schools, U19s and U20s ... a total blue chip prospect. As far as playing games for the Leinster team, the end result was exactly the same for both players.
The same thing for the Route 66 ploy ... it didn't produce anything, but I thought it was worth a shot.
Basically I've arrived at the point where I believe that it's worth taking a few more punts on bringing guys into the academy. If it doesn't work out for them at Leinster, then so what? It doesn't work out a substantial number of the hand-picked few at the moment in any case.
