Next time round SL will increase its clubs and there will be only one other
DIV apart from SL..
SL will operate with the top 8 clubs at the time playing each other 4 times
and the bottom 8 clubs same sounds mad doesnt it
Over the next two seasons several clubs will go into admin and fold
Thats my thoughts on what will happen in two years

Can I just refer you to the results of this past week:
1st team:
Widnes Vikings 44 - 18 York City Knights
Halifax 54 - 16 Leigh Centurions

Reserves
Barrow Radiers 18 - 30 Widnes Vikings
No reserve team at Fax

Academy
Widnes Vikings 38 - 24 Harlequins RL
No academy at Fax

Foundation Academy
Hull KR 24 - 28 Widnes Vikings
No foundation academy at Fax

On playing performance Halifax are ahead of everyone with only Barrow following close behind, but we all know its not just about that anymore. Apparantly Widnes officials have had recent dialogue with the RFL. I don't know exactly what was said but apparantly the RFL were very happy with the approach Widnes are taking and certainly less than impressed with certain clubs who appear not to be focused on junior development. I mean what do you think is the current difference in spend is between Widnes and Halifax on youth development?

We are starting out with our Academy/scholarship programme. For the past few years our reserves won the league 2 out of 3yrs (both againts Widnes!) yet there were very few players coming through into our 1st team.

Therefore, the board, wisely imo, decided that they would scrap the reserves this year, yes to use the money for the 1st team, but with a view to sign up promising youngsters for the new academy. These should provide us with players in the future when the licence applications begin.

I don't think it is quite 15k . . . I thought it was going to be round about 12K...

I'm pretty much reiterating what Griff said, who did your academy keep losing to in the final? Our team was withdrawn because all the other teams weren't up to our standard hence the players weren't getting a good enough run out so there was just no point. We don't have the money to lob around like Barrow and you lot so we have to plan.

=blue[i****** (Tut tut. TS) [/i

You won the GF 2 year running both years beating Widnes , both years Leigh finished top of the league

Nothing to choose between any of the 3 of us , in fact I seem to remember both you and Widnes playing more ' senior ' players in the play offs than you had done during the regular season

However you decided to drop your reserve grade to help finance the 1 st team , ourselves and Widnes have not and are continuing , Widnes even running academy and foundation

Will the RFL take it into account ? possibly , possibly not , but dont pretend it is anything other than a money saving prioritising decision

No as none of our players except Said are French. Also we are not an expansion team just like Leigh aren´t so will not be too surprised to see us all stay in the Championship and being held back by the RFL (Right Friggin Loonies) so that the likes of gateshead, Toulouse can expand the SL

Because that's stating the obvious and everyone knows that but not the sole reason like everyone's trying to make out.

Nice to see Widnes promoting from within..... yet again another loan signing, Jon Grayshon has joined for a month from Quinns. You cant bleat about having a great junior set up & not use em!

Yer true but come on what was the Reserves doing for us and the rest of RL? (apart from the winning a reserve grade GF bit)
Not a lot, it was hardly a conveyor belt of players into NL1 or even NL2 we have only had 1 or 2 - 1st team players coming through this route in the last few years.
The main benefit of the U21s / reserves was being able to give players coming back from injury game time.
I think we and ALL Championship teams (maybe not Championship 1 as they cannot afford) should have an U20 team.
But I was happy to sacrifice the Reserves for the 1st team this year, it aint done us bad has it???

Said is Morrocan.

I think you'll find we've actually used 7 youngsters, which have come through our academy, and there are around 5 or 6 now playing in SL from our academy. One of those players has now been called up for an international game with England. So we can [i'bleat about having a great junior set up'[/i as much as we like.



How may of your academy youngsters have played for you this season?

Three Hope that helps.

And well done for brining this youngsters through...but is it helping you? I would suggest no, as your best youngsters are getting signed by other clubs (as in Myler) and the ones coming though dont look like they are good enough...if they were...you wouldnt be struglling like you are and bringing loan players and letting your younger ones go on loan.

Myler
Nash
Haggerty
Mills
I think there may be another one or two as well.


It should be a big plus come the next round of licences, and will set us apart from the rest.



That's the nature of being in the lower leagues. But if you want to get out of it and into SL your club needs to offer more than just ptting everything into the first team.

We are struggling because of the unbalanced recruitment of Ste Mac and lack of training time put in place by him. We have actually played our youngsters far too much and put too much pressure on them imo. Yates and Flynn will be a major part of our future and there are several very good prospects coming though in the second wave of new academy players, such as Houghton and Wood-Hulme.

If we can win the NRC or get to a GF this season, you'll probably see Widnes taking chances on more younsters next season.

I have said before on this board on a whole other thread I started that I would like fax in super league. You can see from the amount you took to cas in the cup, that fans would come back if you were succesful, it would be like when Hull KR came back, they had a little bit of succes straight away so the fans came back. Fax have also been known for taking lots of away support in the past, this should be taken into consideration. Fax have a good rugby league stadium with modern facilities on the way.

However I would love Leigh back in as well as they would fill our away stand which would be great. Widnes would also bring alot to super league in terms of away support and rivalry. It is going to be a very close race for super league. I would love to go up to 16 teams next time round tbh.

they,ve been wanting to get rid of wakey since they got back in just remember they wern,t relegated from top flight in first place s.l. policy is to spread the game further afield eg scotland then ireland but we,ll still keep two teams in hull and stuff the rest

Simon Grix
Scott Grix
Danny Tickle
Ryan Clayton
Jode Sheriffe

Excellent, but you cannot bring any more through without having any academy set up. Even if you set one up it will take several years to bring players through, so you're still lagging behind.

I forgot Adam Sidlow too.

Maybe but were in it for the long haul.

Why don't we just take the place of Doncaster in the reserves league?