Rhys Lovegrove is counted on our homegrown list and Willie Mason plays for Toulon in France not Hull KR. And just to blow you out the water a bit more we had 6 Hull born players playing for Hull KR when we beat Hull FC on Sunday so your post makes you look quite silly.

Signing Mason worked out well.

Was a joke and the club have accepted that fact. Hopefully we have learnt lessons from this and it won't happen again.

How many of them were products of your own academy structure?

Not quite as silly a post now, is it?

Feel free to trot out the same old "we haven't been in SL long enough to develop our own players" nonsense that HKE fans rely on as some sort of defence for their mediocre efforts at youth development.

Greg Eastwood anyone?

oh right so now the fact we've got hull born players and British players it's not good enough. Oh well at least you'll be fielding hardaker, Pitts and the likes of you managed to poach

Mr Wrist

Yup, these marquee signings work well



He was the right type of overseas signing, shame he didn't want to be here. Leeds should have cut him loose alot sooner and saved the trouble.

He was a big baby really. A young, single, lad in a new country he should have been banging everything in sight. Where's his sense of adventure? Maybe his mama's cooking was just too good.

I dont think that we are in a position to knock the Leeds record of bringing quality kids through their own system since we have been the benificiary of a fair few of them.
Indeed i reckon off the top of my head Rovers have fielded more players that have come through the Leeds Academy system than have come through our own since we reached SL.!
It is changing though through a lot of hard work.

You're quoting using ex-Leeds Academy players as proof of KR's youth policy? Bizarre.

No, i was quoting ex-Leeds Academy players as proof of your youth policy.

You mean we produce sufficient players to fill the void left by your own club's inability to develop young players of SL quality.

I actually think these players will be represented by David Howes - an agent who is not welcome at Leeds. Someone who is finding it increasingly difficult to place players when it requires dialogue with Hetherington.

I thought R.B.A was praising our set up at youth level not having a go.
Looking at our first 17 I don`t think we can be too critical of another teams vast number of overseas signings.
Whilst we have a healthy influence of homegrown players. We do still have our fair share from over the water.

Bet you wish you didn't have a homgrown coach tho.

On a serious note, I'm not sure how the exiles game will affect the players doubling up. Providing non of them go down injured they may come back more motivated.

Think Leeds will nick this one purely due to the fact that I can;t see us doing the double on you two years running. Our defence is still shakey and unless we can play an 80 minute game (which we are yet to do) Home advantage will tip the balance.

Where a player was born has sod all to do with your youth system if you've picked them up from somewhere else. It's the ultimate in red herrings.

It's like Leeds signing Michael McIlorum for next season and taking credit for his development.

You mean those players we've paid transfer fees for, rather than scouring out of contract players in other SL reserve sides? I'm sure Featherstone and Wakefield were quite happy to see some money trickling down to reward their development efforts.

Face facts, your record on youth development is shocking however you try to excuse/disguise it with irrelevant arguments about birth certificates.

To be fair to HKR. They have a few good prospects in their U18s.

Are they australians too?

One of them is.

Agree on the big baby thing. And it can't have been mums cooking as he didn't slim down any while here. Agree on the banging anything in sight would have carried on till it dropped off!!

Don't agree, for the (relatively) short time we have been in SL we have made massive strides with our youth teams. Do you watch any u20 or U18 games?

by looks of it, Hull KR fans will be getting soaked on Sunday

1. Brent Webb
2. Lee Smith
3. Brett Delaney
5. Ryan Hall
6. Danny McGuire
7. Rob Burrow
8. Kylie Leuluai
9. Danny Buderus
10. Jamie Peacock
11. Jamie Jones-Buchanan
12. Carl Ablett
13. Kevin Sinfield
14. Ali Lauitiiti
16. Ryan Bailey
17. Ian Kirke
18. Luke Burgess
20. Weller Hauraki
24. Paul McShane
27. Zak Hardaker

I guess Cross must have shagged BMD's wife, because even when we have two props potentially backing up with 2 games in 3 days, and another who hasn't played for weeks, he can't even make the gameday squad...

Also still no Clarkson????

Hauraki and McShane to drop out for me.

Senior is now the only 1-17 not in the squad, so no excuses with injuries either this week.

Loving that this thread has managed to turn into a slanging match over youth development. Not.

In fairness to HKR, while several posters have acknowledged that they need to (and have begun to) up their game in the youth set-up, they have given some young British lads a chance at times in their career when they struggled to get first team RL at other clubs (Murrell, Fox and Netherton spring to mind immediately) and turned them into very solid SL players and even international contenders. A few less Aussies in the pack would be nice, but if you're behind the pace on that front you can't catch up over night.

To be honest, if you look at where Rovers were 10-12 yars ago, at a time when their cross-town neighbours were getting all sorts of leg-ups, I think they've done a pretty good job so far.

Burgess and Hauraki for me with how he has been picking the team.

So Mr. McDermott has been regularly complaining about not having the opportunity to rest Sinfield, and publicly declared that he's worried about a man who's played every single minute of every single game this season, and stated (quite rightly) that he's unlikely to produce his best work if he's in desperate need of a rest, and that he's risking more serious/longer term injury if playing with fatigue...

and this same man then picks him to play 2 games in 3 days, when McGuire & Burrow (Replacement Playmakers) aren't playing for England, and Clarkson (Replacement Loose) is left out entirely?