Youth Academy Questions

Is there any reason not to LTNT in the YA?

I know some of you look at stars after the match to get an idea how good your prospect is before they disclose their skills. Is the baseline for that LTNT?

Any other tips for maximising your YA output both from a player and profit perspective?

I note that after 3 seasons of 10 lvl 5 nets my U20 Maufe is only just higher in CSR than this guy

Shawn Oade Add Shortcut
19 y/o (R8, D4) | 109,809 CSR (+610) | $14,896 p.w. | 195cm | 93kg | New Zealand
Right handed, right footed, in satisfactory form Stable.
An aggressive player with collected discipline, moderate leadership, and despicable experience.

who only recently came out of the YA.

Is this a way that we could be increasing our pool of U20 players in future?

Playing LTNT maximises players experience

Yeah, no reason not to play LTNT. No chance of long-term injury (and less chance of players going off the field for an in-game injury. You may harm your chances of winning the youth league but I'm fine with that.

There was some discussion in this thread: https://nzblackout.forumotion.com/t15-season-30-u20s about keeping players in the YA a bit longer.

Should you keep 17yos in your academy or promote straight away?

The results are in. 8 out of 10 players that I was tracking in my L3 YA took exactly 5 weeks for their skills (range from 4 to 12) to pop. There doesn't seem to be any slow down in training rate as you head towards the 14 limit, and I presume the 2 players that didn't pop (with 13 skill level) will pop to 14 in the Sunday YA game (update - 1 did).

So how does 4xYA sessions @ 5 weeks compare to L4 and L5 senior training?
L4:
3x IT = 5/6 weeks
2x IT + 1xTT = 6/7
2x IT = 8/9
1x IT + 1xTT = 10/11
L5: Take off one week from L4 times.

Now to normalise pop times into pops per season for a fair comparison, apples with apples if you like.
YA = 12.8 pops/season
(16 weeks/5 weeks to pop = 3.2, and 3.2 x4 YA sessions = 12.8 )

And how does this compare to L4 and L5 senior training? well that depends on their training regime.
Cross = 12.1 pops/season (Activist's player on L4 for his current regime)
Sailer = 11.8 (my player on L4)
Kunavore = 13.4 (my player at my L5 USA club on his current regime).


So what does this all mean? there is no clear cut answer as broadly 4x L3 YA sessions = 10x L4or5 sessions for the limited data that I have. But as you can train a hell of a lot of kids in your academy at once, and it frees up senior training sessions, I'd recommend keeping players in the YA until a few of their core skills (for whatever position you are training them for) hit 14.

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Always LTNT for experience bonus. Rating stars don't mean that much.
I'm pretty sure we talked about this on the old OS, but it can be feasible to train 6 players at once - 3x 19/20yos in seniors and 3x 17/18yos in the YA. This is subject to the players starting skills, positions, what skills you are training etc. YA training stops at 13.99, at lower skills YA training is pretty much equal to senior training at L4 and L5.

So to maximise the YA output for U20s keep players in the YA for 2 seasons (also saves you paying for their wages) and train 6 at a time with a 3-3 age group split. If you train players that aren't kickers or locks (or props depending on what skills you value) this is rather easy to do. To maximise profit sell 17yos with early season (<R6) birthdays, otherwise keep them in the academy. Height (205cm+) sells for big money, and to lesser extent weight.

With the maximise profit part sparky "To maximise profit sell 17yos with early season (<R6) birthdays, otherwise keep them in the academy" - is that any year or in sync with u20 world cups?

In sync with u20 world cups only - so odd numbered seasons.

Thanks for all the info. Good to see all of the analysis. I like the idea of 3 seasons in the YA before promoting. Especially if it means they get better experience as well. I have been playing my U20s with well under 100k csr just to get them IGT and experience. If I can wait and pull them when they are near 100k then that makes training them and including them much easier.

YA question;
For locks I believe the theoretical low height is 189cm, does anyone know if there is a max for prop height? Trying to nab me a lock, somehow got a hooker sized bloke which has confused me about height of players. Anyone have any ideas?

After the last comments by cairnswm in the forum my understanding is that it can happen that players are not always scouted in terms of (I pull a lock, I scout a lock to replace him) but rather in terms of what actually remains in the YA (I have only 2 players above the minimum height of a lock, therefore next scout is a lock)

But this is only my understanding of what has been said in that thread.