KEY POINTS:
For years we have been told about the number of talented players coming through at the Warriors but now we can actually evaluate that for ourselves.
The Toyota Cup under-20 competition mirrors the NRL and will be played as curtainraisers before the main event, meaning the young Warriors
tackle Melbourne's youth team tomorrow night.
While most attention will be on how Ivan Cleary's side will go this season, and rightly so, the introduction of the under-20s is arguably one of the most significant in the club's history.
The club had a reserve grade side for their first couple of seasons and were able to farm out some fringe players last season to the Auckland Lions (now the Vulcans) in the NSW Premier League, but the under-20s is a legitimate feeder to the first team.
They are being treated as, and taught how to be, professional players, are paid within a A$250,000 salary cap and are even using the same calls and systems as the NRL team.
"We will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this competition because we have never had a pathway like this before," youth team manager Dean Bell says.
He's right. The Warriors have always been at a disadvantage, particularly against Sydney clubs, who have four levels of competition for their emerging talent.
They learn the ropes early and tend to adapt to NRL more quickly than New Zealand-based players, feeding the Warriors' reliance on Australian players.
It's also meant this country's top young players have often headed to Australia because there have been these systems in place. While the arrival of the Warriors' under-20 side won't stop every top junior heading across the ditch, it is expected to lessen the flow.
The are few jobs in New Zealand Bell would have come home for, but this is one of them. After spending nearly 20 years in England, interrupted only by returning to play in the Warriors' inaugural season in 1995, Bell specialises in developing young talent.
Bell, together with coach Tony Iro and his assistant Frank Harold, will plot a course that aims to turn six or seven out of the present squad of 32 into fulltime professionals.
It might not seem like a great return, but Bell is realistic.
"It's just so hard to make it at that level," he says. "Talent is not enough. The great thing about the under-20s is that we can educate them and prepare them for the NRL.
"I can already see the difference after being together for five months but we're now going into the weekly grind and these guys will learn very rapidly what it's all about."
A number of Junior Kiwis are included in tomorrow's squad but two who have a better chance than most of making it are Sonny Fai and Russell Packer.
Cleary has said Fai will make his NRL debut in 2008 while Packer is being groomed to help fill the gaping hole left when Steve Price and Ruben Wiki finish with the Warriors.
