Originally posted by Bruce Pickett
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Yea that Ashcroft team were a great team. Saw them plenty of times myself. I recall back then guys would repeat year 12 just to play Amco Shield and hopefully be noticed. Obviously the pathways were different back then. As far as I know, of the 5 brothers only the middle one (Jeff) played a bit of first grade for Parra under Gibbo. The 1st, 2nd brothers played lower grades for Parra and the 4th brother played lower grades for Parra and Penrith. I recall that the eldest brother was coaching the Entrance Tigers in the early to mid 90's. They were all pretty good players though from what I saw at junior level.
Originally posted by OMR
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Not sure about the youngest brother or whether he was ever graded at all. I recall he was touted as being the best of the lot. He played in the same junior team as Tony Cosatto who had a stint at the Roosters. It was one of those teams that won the comp every year monotonously from under 7s onwards. Fans of their rivals probably thought they were over the cap!
To go back to what King Salvo was originally saying, I never saw the Emery's playing at grade level except for Jeff (who I saw very little of) so I can't really comment on how they fared or what happened. Parramatta were pretty strong in all grades at that time so it was probably pretty hard to get through to first grade anyway. Many players look like world beaters at junior level and simply just don't make it in the end. In my own junior days there were players who looked like they would go on to bigger and better things but they didn't. Very few did. I liken it to how tortoises crawl onto the beach, dig a hole and lay 200 or so eggs each and only 2 % of the hatchlings actually make it to maturity. The rest are just food for something else.
So the question about Sam Walker despite his obvious talent is, will he make it to maturity or just end up being eaten? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Just an aside, on the song 'Girl' from the Rubber Soul album by The Beatles, in the middle section of the song where the line is "She's the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there" etc, the cheeky buggers put in backup vocals that are saying "Tit, tit, tit, tit, tit. tit" etc. I just had an epiphany and realised that they were really being very prescient and what they really meant was Trust in Trent.
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