{"id":353933,"date":"2025-12-17T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T13:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/353933\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T13:11:10","slug":"kieron-purtill-joins-wakefield-trinity-in-latest-big-youth-move-total-rugby-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/353933\/","title":{"rendered":"Kieron Purtill joins Wakefield Trinity in latest big youth move \u2013 Total Rugby League"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

WAKEFIELD TRINITY have further underlined the bold ambitions for their youth department with the appointment of Kieron Purtill as academy head coach.<\/p>\n

Purtill has left Leigh Leopards, where over three years he helped set up an entirely new academy set-up while also coaching the women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

The former Huddersfield Giants, Leigh and Widnes Vikings head coach will coach Wakefield\u2019s under-18s as part of an improving youth structure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In October, the club recruited two highly-rated figures from Leeds Rhinos in John Bastian, who has become head of youth, and Simon Bell, as head of talent, recruitment and operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vision of the club and what Matt (Ellis, owner) and his family have done for the club since taking over, not only with the first team but in the community, made the decision to come here a very easy sell,\u201d said Purtill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve left my hometown club where I had a lot of connections and set a lot of things up, and that was difficult. But I\u2019m really looking forward now to a new challenge and buying into the vision at Wakefield.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimon and John have lots of experience in the field and have been doing it successfully for a number of years. Getting them on board was a big statement of the direction the club wants to go in, and getting the chance to work with them is exciting from my point of view.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a crop already coming through to the first team which is exciting, but the group underneath I\u2019ve heard nothing but good things about.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir attitude is superb, and their willingness to learn and turn up every single day \u2013 those are the basic ingredients. Then it\u2019s up to me to improve their skill and knowledge of rugby, to educate them around that and around life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy journey for a rugby player. My job is to mentor those players, get them where they need to go, and hopefully we\u2019ll have some success with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ste Mills, Trinity\u2019s director of rugby, said: \u201cWe\u2019re over the moon to bring a man of Kieron\u2019s experience on board in our youth department to head up the academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving previously worked with Kieron (when Mills was head of performance analysis at Leigh), I know he is the perfect fit for this role and as part of the coaching set-up that we have here at Wakefield.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is a consummate professional and will continue alongside John Bastian, Simon Bell and the rest of the coaching set-up to push Trinity\u2019s youth teams forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meet Wakefield Trinity\u2019s young newcomer Kian McGann<\/a>Super League ins and outs: Every transfer for 2026 season<\/a>Danny Kirmond signs long-term Wakefield Trinity deal<\/a>Jake Connor is Super League Player of the Year as all Readers\u2019 Poll winners revealed<\/a>Wakefield Trinity breakout star Caius Faatili sends warning to rivals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WAKEFIELD TRINITY have further underlined the bold ambitions for their youth department with the appointment of Kieron Purtill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-353933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}