Could Joseph Manu end up being a better NRL centre than Konrad Hurrell?

Since the inception of the Under 20s competition, we have heard and seen first hand the Warriors appearing to flex their recruitment muscles. Not in terms of recruiting NRL players across the ditch, no no no. I'm talking about recruiting teenagers, high school students, to join their Under 20 team and to embark on the next step of the quest to play in the NRL; it's a competitive business.

On the surface it looks as though the Warriors have this all sussed. But while the Warriors have been dominating the Under 20s competition, Australian NRL clubs have been scouting the best talent from around Aotearoa. There will be copious amounts of NRL scouts at the national high school rugby league tournament while players like Tohu Harris get seen at camps around Aotearoa. Harris, a promising rugby player in Hastings, attended one of these camps and was snapped up by the Melbourne Storm.

It was the Storm who initiated the idea to write this in the first place. They currently have a strong kiwi contingent and have always had some kiwi flavour in their ranks, but more importantly they have recently announced plans to set up a training base in Queensland. The Storm view Aotearoa and Queensland as their targeted recruitment areas. They don't neglect Victorian players, they can just get better players from Aotearoa and Queensland.

The Storm have been creative in finding the best talent to join their development system. They have been especially creative in their scouting compared to the Warriors who have heavily relied on Auckland based players to fill out their Under 20s teams. Of the 2014 Junior Warriors championship winning team, only one player came from outside of Auckland with hooker Kurt Robinson hailing from Wellington.

Taking that a step further and of all the kiwi players in the Warriors first grade team named to face the Bulldogs this weekend, only Simon Mannering and Ben Matulino aren't from Auckland (Charlie Gubb is also from Wellington but has been suspended). Players like Solomone Kata and Konrad Hurrell came to Auckland high schools from Tonga, thus falling in the lap of the Warriors. Sam Lisone, Albert Vete, Raymond Faitala-Mariner, Mason Lino, Tuimoala Lolohea, Sebastine Ikahihifo and Siliva Havili are all Aucklanders.

The common argument to make here would be that Auckland has the best rugby league talent, understandably as it's Aotearoa's biggest city. This is true, with the majority of the Warriors' young players being Aucklanders and Australian NRL clubs also enjoying the talents of Aucklanders such as the Bromwich brothers, Roger Tuviasa-Sheck and Jason Taumalolo, who are all amongst the NRL's best.

But one look at the Junior Kiwis team from earlier this year paints a different story and shows how Australian NRL clubs take a broad approach at recruitment. These clubs definitely take their pick of Auckland's finest talent but they also sniff around Aotearoa, hunting for gold mines. Phil Gould and the Penrith Panthers for example have started to build a relationship with Rugby League Northland, viewing Whangarei and the greater Northland area as offering suitable talent.

That Junior Kiwis team included six players who were picked up by NRL teams via Auckland: Watson Heleta, Tony Tumusa, Lamar Liolevave, Marata Niukore, Jazz Tevaga and Toafofoa Sipley. Of those six players, three are from the Warriors with Niukore, Tevaga and Sipley following the Warriors/Aucklander trend.

Interestingly, the rest of the 17 named to face the Junior Kangaroos came from all corners of Aotearoa. Players like Taane Milne, Sione Katoa and Zach Dokar-Clay look to have moved to Australia at a young age so their history was hard to come by, but check this group out:

We only have to look at the Junior Kiwis team from 2011 (another Junior Kiwis team named on the back of a championship Junior Warriors side) to see how quickly NRL clubs have moved to snap up kiwi talent. The 2011 JK team had 10 Warriors players named in it, 2012 had seven, 2013 had seven, 2014 there were only two and last year there were three.

Have the young players the Warriors recruited been as good as those recruited by Australian clubs? I'm not so sure. Especially when you consider that of the 10 Junior Warriors named in the 2011 JK team, only Sosaia Feki, Siua Taukeiaho and Agnatius Paasi (who was 18th man) have established themselves as good NRL players and have done so with Australian clubs. Siliva Havili has failed to really become a solid NRL hooker but could follow the path of those two as he moves to the Dragons next season while Sebastine Ikahihifo's career appears to be in limbo.

Omar Slaimankhel, Adam Henry, Carlos Tuimavave, Sione Lousi and John Palavi aren't players of any great note in 2015. Pause ... wtf is Adam Henry up to these days? Playing for the Bradford Bulls.

We've always been told how great the Warriors development system is, apparently because their Under 20s team has produced so many NRL players. Which is nice, but since 2011 the Warriors have finished 14th, 11th, 9th and won't make the top eight this season. That doesn't make for good reading, plus: the majority of their better players have moved clubs, thus helping other NRL clubs and not the Warriors - Taukeiaho, Feki, Paasi, Elijah Taylor, James Taylor, Peta Hiku and Adam Tuimavave-Gerrard.

So are the Warriors getting the best talent? Or are the Warriors getting the talent that is right there in front of them, dominating the Auckland league or schoolboy rugby scene?

Those are complex questions to answer, I reckon it's a combination of a few things. Maybe Auckland doesn't produce NRL-type of players. When you consider that these Auckland players have been the best in Auckland - a hotbed of talent, maybe they don't work as hard because they don't have to?

I would counter that by raising the point that a lot of Auckland players are extremely successful in the NRL, but that has come at other NRL clubs (obviously the Warriors have had some success here - Shaun Johnson, etc.). Could this be because players like Taukeiaho get out of the Auckland Bubble where many of these players are well known for their ability and then get some tough love to allow their natural talents to flourish?

Taukeiaho and John Palavi both came off the bench for the JK in 2011, both as Junior Warriors.

The Warriors kept Palavi and let Taukeiaho go.

Palavi is a good PR story - a scholar, but he hasn't made any waves in the NRL.

Taukeiaho is enjoying a breakout season with the Roosters.

For me, this should be split into two different questions...

Do the Warriors really get the most of the players they recruit and develop?
Do the Warriors rely too much on Auckland players, while the rest of the NRL enjoys the smorgasbord of talent around Aotearoa?

Another point of note is how ruthlessly the Warriors have pillaged schoolboy rugby. Other NRL clubs do this with the Storm snapping up Matt Duffie and Nelson Asofa-Solomona from rugby plus Suliasi Vunivalu who is in their Under 20s team, while JK fullback Jamayne Isaako is now with the Cronulla Sharks after shining for St Bede's in Christchurch.

However, the Warriors have enjoyed the services of Vete, Kata, Hurrell, Laumape in first grade and Dylan Collier and Ngataua Hukatai in the Under 20s. Three of those players have gone back to rugby, while I'd say that only Vete has really emerged as a well-rounded NRL player. Both Kata and Hurrell have a long way to go, with Hurrell's career not too far away from being a 'what could have been' yarn.

Why is a club with so much rugby league talent in it's backyard so eager to get rugby union players while Australian NRL clubs get better players from around Aotearoa? It's odd.

If I were in charge, I would set up training bases in Wellington and Christchurch. Similar to what the Storm have done in Queensland, as they know what they have in Victoria and what they need. When the owners of the Warriors (silly buggers that they are) boasted about providing an injection of cash and bravado into the Warriors and local rugby league, they missed the point. This isn't the New Zealand Warriors, it still feels like the Auckland Warriors.

Being the New Zealand Warriors should mean that money is invested to get the best rugby league players from around Aotearoa into the Warriors' system. Setting up facilities in Wellington and Christchurch would give these young players the opportunity to train and to get a foot in the door with the Warriors. The Warriors can then pick the best players to complement their Auckland based players, giving Australian NRL clubs the leftovers.

Right now, it feels as though the Australian clubs take the best players from around our country and the Warriors get the leftovers, or the leftovers don't even get seen by the Warriors.

Whatever happens from this point on is going to be interesting to observe. I've never seen the NRL with so many kiwis in it, doing so well, and yet the Warriors for all their big talk still have the same old problems. They just aren't very good and they could be so much better if they went that extra mile in recruiting youngsters, or got creative and gave back to Aotearoa by providing our own players with greater opportunities.