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Jamie McCormack appreciation thread

Titanic said:
HS, I’ve been following your up-dates on the future pathways challenges, could you put that all into context please?
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Just by observations mate, and I'll preface this by saying that our pathways is a mile ahead of where it was once upon a time.

The competitive landscape for junior recruitment is more difficult than ever. At 15's level, it's a free for all as NRL clubs compete for the best kids in that age group (the year they turn 15 is the year they can sign with a club) and the Titans target all of the Gold Coast, parts of Brisbane, Northern Rivers, and areas in NZ.

2017ish they overhauled our pathways with more investment/resources and we had a really, really good run for a few years and were landing the best kids in the region (e.g. Arama, Seth), as well as Bris (e.g. Josiah), plus getting some really good jr talent out of the Northern Rivers (e.g. Tom, Ryan Foran, Jaylan, Oskar). This continued and our current U18's group is arguably the strongest we've had (e.g. Sam Stephenson, Cooper Bai, Zane Harrison). I've always said there's no guarantee kids turn into NRL players and that's always the case, but you have to recruit the best to give yourself the best chance of developing and transitioning the best.

In the last 2-3 years, we've really struggled to land the top tier of kids on the GC. In fact, our best kids in 15's to 17's are out of NZ due to Ezra Howe's connections, with the exception of maybe one or two. Northern Rivers we have a good hold on but realistically the talent pool isn't quite as strong year on year as SEQ.

The Broncos and Dolphins are signing the best kids between them, and their kids in 15's to 17's is a long way ahead of ours, IMO. We're missing the best GC talent, to be frank.

The reason is a mixture of things depending on who you ask. My opinion is that it's resources and personnel. We're not meeting the financial commitment that other clubs are making to kids these days either, which is seeing us miss talent or even lose some talent that's already in our system.

This isn't intended to be a doomer post, because things aren't doom and gloom at all. But we should be demanding high performance at every single level of the organisation - the Broncos do, and the Dolphins are going hard at securing their own piece of market share. Plus, more and more Sydney clubs are recruiting aggressively in SEQ every year. We need to improve how we're securing the top talent at the younger age group because I think we've gone backwards a bit.
 
Thanks and I hope our other LoT readers take note. Developing any organization takes a lot of investment in building and maintaining their foundations.
 
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