Rugby League Coaching Manuals

By Phil Wilkinson, Wigan Today - Wigan Warriors have announced the appointment of John Pendlebury as the club's head of youth development. And as part of a plan to crank up the production line of young players emerging through the ranks, Wigan great Kris Radlinski returns to the club as scholarship coach - a move revealed in this week's Wigan Observer.

In a newly-created role at Wigan, Pendlebury will be responsible for all aspects of the recruitment and development of young players at the Warriors ranging from 13 to 19 years of age and including scouting, the scholarship programme, the academy team and Wigan's vitally important accelerate programme.

Pendlebury, who was Under-18s coach last term, said: "I am really excited about my new role and it is a huge honour to become the Head of Youth Development at Wigan Warriors.

"The role is all about identifying players at a young age and then looking after them. The development of young players is an important job if both Wigan and the game of Rugby League generally are to continue to thrive and to be even more successful in the years to come."

His appointment follows that of Ray Unsworth as head of programme development for players and coaches, Dave Lyon's part-time role as specialist skills development coach and Keith Schmechel's part-time role in performance analysis.

Chairman Ian Lenagan said: "We are delighted to appoint such experienced and distinguished professionals as John Pendlebury and Ray Unsworth to their important new roles.

"The pair will play a major part as we look to develop even more exciting young Wigan talent through to first team level in the next few seasons. The duo are highly respected within the game and we look forward to increasing progress in all areas of the club."

Pendlebruy and Unsworth will both report jointly to Lenagan and head coach Brian Noble.

Lenagan added: "These exciting appointments show the heavy and increasing investment by Wigan in the full development of our scholarship and academy players.

"Wigan is blessed with a wide area of young talent to call upon and this is the start of the process to have Wigan's new player and coach development programmes achieve recognition as being clearly world-class."