news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 176199.stm signs for Oldham, good luck to him

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 176199.stm signs for Oldham, good luck to him

Has anyone seen him play? There is a guy at work who is an Oldham fan, very close to the running of the club. He reckons Bradbury is a quality player and his stop in NL for a year is just that, a year until a Super League team can make space for him at centre. Reckons he's far too good to be playing in the National Leagues. He said there has been a lot of unhappy players at Saints in general with better prospects overlooked in favour of egos in terms of youth promotion.

Seems a tad strange we've let another outside back go, Armstrong too, when ours are so utterly terrible, bar Shenton.

He got a first team call up for one away match but never played.

I think the choice of a two year contract for Meli lends some credence to the suggestion that the club has opted for so-called big name players over the young talent. Although to be fair Meli only has a big name for opposition teams really given his propensity to hand them a try or two at a crucial moment. I would have much preferred to have Bradbury stick around so that he could have had a go at first team level in the coming season.

I'm disappointed that Saints are letting so many young players go. Especially in our backline. We are going to feel it this time next season.

Bradbury wasent good enough for our first team. It was a surprise he was handed a first team contract in the first place.

He failed to impress in the u20 competition last season. Good luck to the lad but I highly doubt we'll see him in SL again.

When we go with kids though from within. The cry on these boards is WERE ARE THE BIG NAME SIGNINGS!!!

your dammed if you dont and dammed if you do. Personally think its about striking a balance.

There are only so many players you can keep, and if Saints think they have better coming through at a younger age group, there is no point hanging onto someone who would soon be outclassed by another youngster. As thats not fair on the likes of Bradbury.

Exactly. But we're not making that balance. Francis Meli can be a half decent player, but at his age he is not going to be a dangerous player. A solid finisher who'll only let us down in major finals, but lets not confuse him with an ambitious marquee signing. Jamie Lyon/Darren Albertini he is not!

We have made two big signings this year. Shenton and Perry. Over the last 5 years we've probably let 10 world class marquee players go and signed three or four in that period.

There are a lot of squads in SL (If not all of them) with more established senior players than we have. Yet we're spending to the cap? It makes no sense at all. Renewing the contracts of Meli and Flannery prevented us having a ridiculously weak squad, but it speaks volumes about the clubs ambition if there were no possibilities for us to sign anyone better than those two.

It's like the situation at United. Former glories now looking dangerously close to being a thing of the past. Only problem is we don't have an Alex Ferguson. Jammer/Kyle are our Rooney, it'll be interesting to see how that one pans out for us.

Name them.

I think Armstrong being dual registered with Leigh could really bring him on (hopefully), so that's one young centre, Foster's technically a centre by choice, Wheeler is a good choice at centre when fit and there's the young lad Tommy Makinson as well, so if Badbury was behind all of those then he wasn't going to get much of a look in at centre.
Hopefully we'll fill our centre position with one of those, or a marquee signing, but I hope Badbury does kick on at Oldham and win a SL contract. Now that the quota's tightening there should be more scope for guys like this that don't make it at their first club. Good luck to him.

Regarding the resigning of |Meli and Flanders, as I said at the time, they were pretty uninspiring news flashes, but not awful moves squad wise.
Obviously now I wish that we'd let one of them go because I'd like to sign Monaghan. If only we could of predicted he'd be available

I'd be quite happy a loosing Ned Flanders to be honest.

But Meli doesn't count, does he? He signed before the 2007 deadline that I was reading about the other day so we could in theory have another overseas player. If we had room under the cap.

I was thinking more from a wage/salary cap POV.

I have to admit I am not very happy about us resigning Flannery and Meli when we should be promoting from within. Players like Armstrong, Wheeler, Lomax and Maggenis need to be given more time if the first team this year otherwise we are going to lose more young players.

The club does not seem to be looking long term enough at the moment.

Not by me. I've been consistently in favour of developing our young players rather than bring in antipodean journeymen or resigning elderly has-beens. Obviously a balance has to be struck between youth and experience but I think letting go of young backline players is foolish of Saints especially when one of them hasn't even had the chance to show what he has at first grade level and yet is playing in a position we are crying out for talent to fill.

I do hope the club isn't going backwards and that Royce will be strong enough to drop our elderly has beens in favour of a conscious policy of providing an opportunity to our potential talent in the backline. We sure do need it.

How much U21 rugby do you watch to make that kind of comment? If you've seen a lot of him fair enough, but if you haven't, why do you think he should get that chance?

Did he show enough to be given that first team opportunity? Perhaps his games in the U21s showed enough weaknesses to not be considered for the next level up. He's certainly not a name that has been put forward by people I know to be regular U21 watchers as a potentially great player. And whilst some players develop at later ages, we've not made many, if any, mistakes in which young players we have released in the last 10 or so years.

Over a period of time like 10 years it's difficult to quantify the players as some have been replaced and then the replacements have been replaced or not in some cases.

e.g Iro -> Gleeson (Many would have said this was a major step down at the time) -> Lyon -> Gidley -> Shenton

on the other hand have we every replaced Scully? Long and it took over a year to replace Talau with a second row (wearing the number 4 shirt)

As I said, Armstrong, Foster, Wheeler are all guys that can play centre and have had first team chances, plus Makinson is highly rated. We also have Lomax and Gaskell who will fill in for other positions in the backs.

We can't keep them all, and if its the best thing for Bradbury to move on, then the club shouldn't stand in the way if he's not in their plans. If we started tying down youngsters and then not releasing them even if we didn't need them, there'd be a lot more discontent in the camp i'm sure.

Agreed.

We've a number of young players who possibly have 10 years ahead of them in the game that have shown that they will go on to become, at the very least, competent SL standard players. Younger kids are going to have to show something extra to displace them in the squad.

Exactly, whether Bradbury ends up in SL or just has a decent career for oldham, it shows young lads at Saints that even if they don't make the SL grade for saints, its not the end of their career. If saints look after them and help find them a club that suit their level, then it will a) give the youngsters the confidence that the club will do the best by them, thus keeping player morale high and b)forge relationships with NL clubs that could come in handy if they have any young stars who should make the step up to SL.

I am an Oldham supporter just checking out this thread about one of our new additions 'coming home'. By the wat if you would like to send Kyle back to his home town I am sure we would try to squeeze him in somewhere...!

But seriously, I am sure that if the young lad is good enough you would hope that he would a slot somewhere in a SL squad ahead of an overseas journey man assuming he shows his potential in the National leagues.

The mere fact that somebody so ordinary as Meli is retained in one of our top SL sides is surely enough of a condemnation of the state of our game. he should get anywhere near first grade with his lack of pace and inability to catch a kick but he does and he will next yr.

Anybody surprized that we are not on the 4 Nations final?

Meli has experience, any team that tries to replace experience with youth too quickly comes a cropper and we've lost a lot of experience over the last 2 or 3 years. Bradbury isn't in competition with him, he's in competition with the likes of Lomax, Foster and Armstrong.



No, considering the youth development outside of pretty much Saints, Wigan and Leeds has been pretty woeful over the last ten years.

What are the rehabilitation facilities like in Oldham? World class?