If your child has ambitions to be a professional rugby player, please read on. If you are a school or club coach, a teacher or a Premiership director of rugby, what follows is also important. It can be paraphrased thus: what is the best way to develop youthful talent? Or, perhaps more pertinently, how can they be saved from the boneheaded thinking affecting too many teenagers up and down the country?

Here, by way of illustration, is a case study involving a 17-year-old academy player. On day one at his new club this summer he was asked how many games he had participated in last season. The answer was 68. Sixty-eight games! At the age of 17! When the medics examined him they found that – surprise, surprise – his shoulders were already shot. Before he had touched a ball the club had to book him in for surgery.

At another outwardly thriving Premiership club, the word is their junior academy players are being discouraged from applying for university in 2015. It is far easier for a club to manage them if studies do not come into the equation. Horribly easy, too, for the player to be persuaded his career will develop more swiftly if he dumps his files. Yet this is a profession in which some figures suggest just 4% of senior academy players go on to be Premiership regulars. Even if they make the first team, they are just one serious injury away from having to find alternative employment.

Which brings us to Worcester. Relegated from the Premiership at the end of last season, they could have sat back, whisked out a large chequebook and signed a southern hemisphere has-been as a temporary fix. Instead, to their credit, they have done the opposite and set out to establish the most outstanding youth development structure they could conceive. It did not make many headlines when they launched their first junior academy centre at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, last week but their mission statement is both refreshing and impressive.

Nick Johnston, Worcester’s high performance director, explains it thus: formerly a strength and conditioning guru at Sale and Northampton, he was on the brink of leaving rugby when Dean Ryan phoned him to ask about the integral part he had played in resurrecting the Saints following their Premiership relegation. Subsequently, Johnston ended up agreeing to join Ryan’s revolution at Worcester. One of the key issues was how to prevent good homegrown players leaving for other clubs; Tom Wood, Matt Kvesic and Graham Kitchener are among nine ex-Warriors currently starring for Premiership sides. They also wanted to develop well-rounded individuals with a life beyond the gym who were not just obsessed with gulping down growth-enhancing supplements.

In other words, Worcester have set out to break the mould. Parents and kids have access to an app containing all kinds of bespoke information, from nutritious recipes to insurance options. Clubs such as Saracens already strive to encourage players to study something other than lineouts but the Warriors wanted to address every aspect of the jigsaw.

“The professional game gets a bad press and gets blamed for not listening,” explains Johnston. “So we spoke to schools, teachers, rugby clubs and, most importantly, parents to get a clear understanding of what prevents a lad from progressing in the sport in our region. We were good at getting young players at Worcester but from 16 to 19 we’d lose everybody.”

Among the solutions – and fair play to the club’s board for their financial backing – are six new junior academy centres, covering the large area from Telford through Birmingham to Warwick and Hereford. Parents no longer have to slog down to Sixways three times a week with exhausted offspring; instead they can attend sessions closer to home. Sports scientists, conditioning coaches, medics and nutritionists are on tap with the aim of giving everyone the best chance physically. Arriving as a sleek elite athlete is not a prerequisite. “First and foremost we want them to be able to play rugby and to enjoy playing rugby,” stresses Johnston. “All we’re trying to do is put an infrastructure in place where we work in partnership with the schools and clubs, with the school in the middle. It’s also about understanding adolescent athletes. People don’t do that well enough in this country. We’re very guilty of burning our talent out before we allow it to develop. It’s criminal.”

It is a serious charge. But what is a decent player to do when his school, club and county all want a piece of him? Individual player management becomes fundamental, as does making allowances for those whose bodies are still growing. “We do maturation calculations at 15 or 16, when we scan certain individuals’ bones to look at their growth plates,” reveals Johnston. “That’ll give us a reasonable indication of how far they’ll grow and give us a more informed decision about what position will suit a certain individual down the line.”

Nor does Johnston believe youngsters should have to sacrifice their education to make it in top-level rugby: “We’ve got a lad in our under-17s who got nine A*s at GCSE. He’s probably going to do well at A-level and wants to be a doctor. My job is to facilitate a place at medical school for him.

“He’ll still be one of our players but things will just be done a bit differently. Ideally you want them local but you’ve got to accept some may have to go out of the area. You’ve got to develop the person as much as the talent. It’s a key thing for me.”

Let’s hope that enlightened message filters through to those clubs who do not currently share the same mindset. Johnston’s thoughts on supplements for teenagers should also be printed on every gymnasium wall. “The big risk to the game is 16 to 18-year-olds taking inappropriate supplementation bought off the internet. It isn’t tested and there’s a significant increase in positive tests around that area. The RFU and PRL [Premier Rugby Ltd] are doing a big educational drive, but we’re taking it to the next level.

“We don’t advocate the use of supplements until training demands aren’t being met by their food intake, which doesn’t really happen until they are 17 or 18 and in an elite programme. We prefer to give them the message that food is the first source of body development. We’re more concerned about immune function products, vitamin support and helping them to stay healthy. We don’t want them taking supplements for the sake of it. They end up buying rubbish off the internet which is just full of packing agents.”

It may be a while before these fine intentions bear fruit but already it feels as if Worcester are heading in the right direction. “It’s a little bit of a different philosophy to some clubs, but for us it’s a no-brainer,” concludes Johnston. “Hopefully it’ll be a point of difference and stop some of our players leaving Worcester because of what we’ve done for them early on. We’re trying to do it right by putting education at the forefront. Where will it get us? That’s the million-dollar question. We’ve started the journey and we’ll see where we get to.”

FAIR DINKUM POMS

Grannies are back in the news. Saracens’ Australian prop Kieran Longbottom has just unearthed one which makes him available to represent England, if they want him. The ranks of those who, by dint of three years playing professional rugby in England or France, are suddenly qualified via residence is also growing. The International Rugby Board’s chief executive Brett Gosper told me last week there were no plans to amend the three-year time span, which increasingly favours those with strong, cosmopolitan professional leagues. A stiffer, five-year residency requirement would be a much fairer way of separating the genuine migrants from the opportunists queueing up to reject the countries of their birth. There is also a good argument for a rule permitting players who win only a handful of caps for a tier one nation to switch allegiance to a tier two country for whom they also qualify through birth or bloodline. It would certainly make Rugby World Cups more competitive.

ONE TO WATCH THIS WEEK

South Africa v Australia. A significant game for both teams as they seek to stay in touch with New Zealand in the Rugby Championship. South Africa have injury issues and are blowing hot and cold but a Wallaby win on Springbok soil would still count as a serious statement a year out from the 2015 Rugby World Cup. England’s coaches will be among those watching intently.