Hellewell, wardle and george all have potential and its annoying but pretty enevitable that a successful youth production system will be cherry picked by rich clubs....there are other clubs who have longer experience of that than us.

But importantly we have retained some of the youth products that have already proven they can step up and begin developing as a super league player in Addy, Whitehead and Donaldson.

We are going to win some and lose some in this long term project of developing our own players, but as long as we produce more than we lose the club still benefit, both in terms of getting first team players through our own youth set up and getting revenue in for the ones that are taken. Its still a postive despite what it feels like when 1 good prospect goes, we can't keep em all when clubs with money want to step in, we just need to deal with it the best we can on a case by case basis.

It was on the cards wasn't it. Wonder who else we'll sponsor now?

It's the curse of FAs banner.

The key factor is the fee. Sounds like the deal was done pretty quick which going by previously long drawn out affairs means we got close to what we asked for a player we were told by Paul Medley was not ready for the first team.

If the fees for Hellewell, Burgess and Wardle = 100k Saints want for Pryce then I'd take that exchange.

Hellewell and Wardle were OOC, so we'd have got the standard RFL tarriff for x weeks times y amount (or whatever it is)? If so, maybe a bit over £10k for each. Suspect whatever we got for George will not have been hugely more than that given it seems best guess we got £100k for Sam, although you would hope rather more than might have been the case had Crowe not had a very strong commercial reason for wanting to grab him - so you never know?

The only "good" thing about this is that between the three kids we've lost they had 1(?) full appearance between them. Therefore all we've lost is potential.

OK, they may turn out to be brilliant, and in many ways I hope they do as it highlights our structure is doing what it should be and identifying and developing future stars.

On the other hand, I too am mightily annoyed, but, as has been stated we can't compete with the moneybags elsewhere.

Some kids have a bit more of a tendancy to stick to what they know and have pride in playing for their hometown, ie Whitehead being a Bradford lad, others follow brothers - ie the Burgess twins have followed Luke to Leeds, then Sam back to Bradford and then on to Souths. Others follow the money - and who can blame them?

Hopefully Bullbuilder can generate a large support base following on from the leaflet campaign in the season ticket distribution. If so, hopefully many of the academy players will benefit from this trust, and have a greater tie to the club and the passion to "pay back" those who have helped to invest in their future at the club.

Is fans we cant complain too much as the drop in attendance has had a negative effect on our financial position clearly. The fact is, at that age the contracts are short so you always risk losing them when renewal comes around. keeping the lads that have made the step up is key and we have done that. Crookes is a perfect example of a guy who looked great at junior and has struggled so we cant just pin our hopes on lads that the coaches dont think are ready.

Don't think it is length or size of contracts really, it's just that we have to work within a structure. You have a budget for existing players and a budget for signings. The commercial fact is that if you want someone better than what you've got from another club, then you have to pay them over the odds, else they won't (obviously) move. So as the buying club you work that into your pay structure.

Whereas as the selling club, you can't (again, obviously) work a big pay hike into your structure, this being obvious because - it being your existing structure - if you decide to pay significantly more - you just broke your structure!

I'm not saying you would never, ever make an exception but invariably you decide what contracts you are offering to who, for what length, and at what price, and then you have to stick to that, or else your numbers don't add up.

Also in George's case, additional factors apply. Even if there wasn't really much more money, I can see why some young players would think the other factors of a place somewhere within the NRL, a couple of years in sunny Aus, parties with bro Sam at Russell Crowe's and hob-nobbing with the Aus jet set and NRL stars might be viewed as having some small attraction over and above the issue of your basic wage.

On the question of losing some young players, I really don't see why anyone is even surprised at this. Surely, you know before you start that there will be attrition, and that if you turn up any really good or promising ones, whom other clubs view as better than anything they've got, then there always have bbeen and always will be approaches, and poaching. We do enough of it ourselves, ffs. I think the seeming view of some that if a handful of youngsters leave, there must be something wrong with the system, naive and, frankly silly.

I agree with the above post. The point RE contract length is that at the early stages of careers contracts are nearly always short due to the number of variables with players at this stage in their career. Whilst this protects the club from the huge number of players who dont make it, it leaves them vulnerable when a player is progressing well but not ready.

Why would the club accept the same amount of money for a lad that had 2 years left on his contract as 2 lesser known players who were OOC? I'm guessing but would have thought the speed and relatively smooth manner of the deal suggests the Bulls were happy with what was offered.

Indeed re the last point. But, even so, why would the fee for George be anything remotely resembling what we got for Sam (which you can reasonably deduce from the 2009 accounts) given one was a GB international and seen as potentially the best forward in the gfame, and the other was not judged ready for an appearance yet in the top flight?

I don't think we'll have got much more than £10k each for the other two, given they were OOC and all we were due will have been the "training" fee, so do you realistically think we received £70k - £80k for George, being nearly as much as we got for Sam?

the bulls dont get to choose the amount for this OOC

But George wasn't OOC.

Wardle and Helliwell were, which is why their fees were set by the rules, not an agreement. George Burgess' fee would need to have been agreed by both the Bulls and Souths.

I reckon we got two tickets to Russell Crowe's next film and a bag of fruit gums.

someone put the figure up at time wardle went to hudds. Think for 3 yrs he was here it worked out about 15kish (so tariff would be about £100 a week). hellewell was only here 2 yrs so another 10k for him. 25k total, give or take a few hundred for those 2 and I'd guess if we got anything more than 25k for george,given his age and relative inexperience, then we'd be doing well. So maybe 50k coming in to add to whatever settlement we reach with orford to fund potential transfers.

Maybe the people moaning at club for allowing george to leave would be better served questioning his tw@ of a manager who was busilt touting him round down under, despite him having 2 years left on his deal. At the end of the day the fringe benefits lifestyle wise to george of playing in australia would pretty heavily outweigh any potential extra wage we could have offered him to try and retain him (not to mention potential disruption within youth system if one player is on significantly more money) so I dont really see what club have done to stop him going. Surely better in this instance to take a reasonable fee to re-invest into either signings/youth system not to mention georges wage is now available for another kid coming into setup.

Unless we have built in some extra payments for the years to come (assuming he stays at Souths) based on first team appearances and/or first international cap

Supporters demand their club pay big money to buy all the best players and pay big money to sign up all the best current players. They don't care where the money comes from and will slag off their own club bigtime whenever they don't think the board are stumping up enough money. Realism isn't a strongpoint with them but it pees me off when they say the club "should have kept" so-and-so, like so-and-so was a dog.

Adey, you make it sound like they took him away and gave us what they fancied. The lad is under contract and they wanted him. Hence the responsibility to make the deal attractive was theirs, not ours. Considering we have just sold more season tickets and taken more money than for the last number of years and there is clear evidence we are investing in the squad (even well placed sources suggesting we would pay a fee for a certain stand off) the idea that we would even field a phone call for 10-20k would seem very odd indeed.

realisitically what valuation would you put on a player yet to make his senior debut (and from previous comments by the coaching staff not expected to feature more than a handful of times this coming year) and with only 2 years left on his current deal?

Assuming that what Connor said is subsequently confirmed by the club, then at a rough guess yes, I suspect it went a bit like that. Not helped by the club's biggest shareholder being his manager, either. Except that, unlike the dealings with Mimis and Pratford, I think Crowe is more likely to have behaved responsibly and offered a sensible amount. After all, its probably his own money shelled out, and he has good marketing reasons to want the lad.

What was the club to do? Tell him he could not go unless we got £100k or whatever? And have one very unhappy bunny twittering away how crap the club is and winding his brother and everyone else up? Probably getting paid but not playing?

If all the club could get from Crowe for Sam was £100k, I'd suggest it would be very odd indeed to expect the club to have been able to hold out for more than a fraction of that for his younger, far less experienced and (at present) far less capable brother?

But we are all speculating. It may become a bit more clear if and when the Bulls issue a statement, and you can anyway see the total transfer fees received when the 2010 accounts are published.

When did the twins sign for us? 2 years ago? 3 years ago? Can't remember now.

Lets say for argument's sake it was 3. Then take into account his 2 years left on his deal. That would mean if he left at the end of this contract, we would be entitled to an approximate £25k fee, providing we offered him a deal too, yes?

Bearing that in mind, I would expect that is the amount we get now. No point letting him leave for less, when we could keep him for 2 years and then get that amount. On the flip side, daft to keep a player who doesn't want to be here when you're going to lose him anyway in 2 years time. So I would expect whatever the compensation figure we would get for him (which is about £5k per year he's been with us) at the end of his contract, is about the same as the figure we'll get for letting him go to Souths now.

I'm only speculating, but I would be surprised if it was far off the mark.

and AFAIK we'd only get that figure if he went to another SL club. If we made him wait two years then he went to souths anyway we'd get diddly squat. Dont think theres any agreement in place between RFL and NRL to honour the payments for youth products. AFAIK its just an RFL agreement.

regarding george,i once spoke with him after a rhinos game,he had only just signed for the club and was just 16 at the time,he said that both he and twin brother tom couldn't wait to make it into the elite rhinos squad eventually alongside eldest brother luke,sam was apparently the black sheep of the family maybe this boy speak with forked tongue? www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/447 ... SS%20TWINS George added: "It's great to know I'll be here for the next three years and we both know what we have to do to establish ourselves in the squad. It's going to be a big change from last year when we were still at college and only training in the evening but I'm excited. It's really good to be training with the First Team; I've been waiting for this since I first signed for the club last year." both tom and george we're clearly offered more by the bulls than was on the table at the rhinos,hence them signing these deals it now appears that george has taken an offer that not only the bulls cant beat!

regarding george,i once spoke with him after a rhinos game,he had only just signed for the club and was just 16 at the time,he said that both he and twin brother tom couldn't wait to make it into the elite rhinos squad eventually alongside eldest brother luke,sam was apparently the black sheep of the family maybe this boy speak with forked tongue? www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/447 ... SS%20TWINS George added: "It's great to know I'll be here for the next three years and we both know what we have to do to establish ourselves in the squad. It's going to be a big change from last year when we were still at college and only training in the evening but I'm excited. It's really good to be training with the First Team; I've been waiting for this since I first signed for the club last year." both tom and george we're clearly offered more by the bulls than was on the table at the rhinos,hence them signing these deals it now appears that george has taken an offer that not only the bulls cant beat!

And once again we have my point from the other day proven......

Incidentally in this case, although my earlier frustration, I'm not so sure George will be on more money at Souths than he would be here.

I would expect this time, it is the opportunity and life that is the appeal rather than a bag of cash.