I’ve seen Stephen’s once against Wigans academy and we couldn’t deal with him tbh. Will that translate to the first team? Who knows but it’s not going to give him any less of a chance having that sort of physical presence.

What I will say though is that big lads have dominated at academy level before and not been able to translate it to first team rugby. The most devastating academy performances I can recall were from Ryan Bailey at Leeds and he never managed it. I’m not saying he had a bad career, far from it but he was killing teams at that level, going over, through or round players for fun but in the first team he ended up making a career more as a grafter and wind up merchant.

I found this interesting from the Academy coach in relation to what we've been discussing.

“Whether they all go on and reach that potential remains to be seen, But I believe this current crop of young players is as good as we’ve ever had.”

That seems a lot more nuanced and balanced than what Rush has said or what some fans seem to think is an almost foregone conclusion that they will come through and succeed at this level.

I think there's been a lot of outside noise about this crop of players (Stu has named them all) that won't be beneficial to them. The club have previous in getting these transitions right though, and you can see already the likes of Stephens and Vaughan (the two most physically ready) in and around first team environments. Saints have some work to do to successfully integrate them all and the hype around them won't help but it will be an interesting couple of years seeing them all come through and hopefully replace the older guard.

It will be interesting but they will need some of the older players to help them. At this rate some of those experienced heads will be in care homes. Joking apart, these lads need some exposure this season if they are to transition seamlessly there is only so much experience playing on loan can give you. What still amazes me is that we still go on about how we need to protect young players, tell that to the greats like Murphy, Farrell and Gregory who were hardly out of school and yet holding down regular first team places.