Yeah i can't say i know those people i mentioned personally, except Anthony Elias who played for us and western suburbs in the lower grades, back in the 80's.
Mark Hughes i do know and his brother Gary who i believe is sadly missed by this club when it comes to identifying and nurturing junior talent.
I have my theories as to why junior development has fallen behind: Some reasons include but are not limited to:
Junior rep coaches should have there salary increased, so we attract better candidates not just local coaches who have an interest because they have a son or relative playing in the local area. Im told junior rep coaches are on between 4-8 thousand per season. If we are blowing out our football budget by a million or so, seems strange that we are not paying good money for the best junior development coaches.
We as a club give the rep kids very little. Next door neighbour has a son who played SG ball, he got one training shirt, one pair of shorts, one pair of socks one back pack, one polo shirt, one hoodie etc.... Compare this with Cronulla who got 3 of everything, plus a tracksuit, wind jacket, duffle bag on top of a backpack and a pair of running shoes and boots. I believe manly and parra do the same and its not as if we are broke and it doesn't sound a big deal but to a kid it is.
Manly this year got a dietician to prepare meals for there junior rep kids in the off season. Just another indication of what other clubs are doing for there juniors that we are not.
We give a heap of kids a rep trial every off season....wrong ...wrong.....wrong. We should already have 22 of the 25 players picked in the squad by october with maybe 2-3 bench spots still up for grabs. Not have 40 kid training squads in the off season, absolute incorrect approach, if your junior development manager hasn't got the squad he wants by nov 1st preseason, you are already way behind.
These are just a few things wrong with our junior development, the reason we were strong and competitive was it used to be very hard to get into a junior rep side even harder to get an invite to an open trial, not fill out an application online and turn up and have a run.