Would be a really stupid player manager if he didn’t trawl the North West of our juniors. Basically the 3 biggest clubs in the district are Hills, Rouse Hill,and Wenty with Kellyville reemerging in th last 2/3 years.
His children also play in the Hills touch competition so he’s around a lot.
The issue is that Penrith under Cameron and Jim Jones sell the reasons to stay in their system, not sure we have the same pull with the Ponnisi of the west. Will say under De Gois and his offsider the junior reps are building well, it’s when they enter the identification and retention higher up the ladder that we seem to fail.
Maybe with the media taking aim at the pointy end of the club, re options and junior losses and unbalanced NRL roster etc we may see the pressure required to improve.
Having been involved in both the Penrith and Parramatta junior system, fair to say 3/4 years ago, Penrith were paying a lot more attention to their juniors, even though there will still complaints. Believe we have stepped up a bit , so again it seems failing to sell any vision and probably not enough camaraderie with the player managers hasn’t helped.