i agree to a point,but as someone has alluded to,next year is rovers' 5th in super league,surely by now they could have found some young british talent to bring upto SL standard? and especially given the amount of amateur/junior clubs on their doorstep too.

It was 25 man squads as deemed by the RFL to be a clubs First Team Squad. I did include Whatuira, which simply a judgement call as to who to include and who not. Drew, mentor or not, is an overseas player in Huddersfield's first team squad, as are Fa'alogo and Lolesi.

As for your other young players, thats why I restricted it to a first team squad of 25, otherwise its simply a case of which team has a bigger academy. Which means sod all. Josh Griffin was signed from Wakey, Keal Carlile was signed from Bradford and I didn't include them or McGilvary, Hodgson, Walker, Fairbank or Brown in the 25 man squad due to more senior players above them.

Andy Raleigh, I thought, started out at Sheffield however if I'm wrong about that I'll happily change it.

It is slightly (and no more than that) worrying in my view that Hudds only have 3 (or 4) academy products in their team, however I don't know enough about Hudds academy system now to judge what potential it has for the future. Same goes for Hull KR by the way.

we weren't a top side either we were in our 4th season back in the top flight and we saw a good young English prospect, which is what rovers are guilty of not doing in their 4th season.

We've got some good young english prospects given full time contracts in this our 4th season in SL. So lets see how we are the end of the season shall we?

The work being done by Martin Dunn at Rovers with the academy is excellent.

fair enough,i wasn't trying to make out you were being naughty


we have some good prospects in the academy set up who will only improve with brad drew as their coach, we beat hull in the eliminator last week 33-14 and now play wigan. hopefully we will see some of these lads coming through next year as mcgilvary has done this year, 7 tries in 5 games.

good stuff,hopefully some of these lads will start to come through next year if given chance?

Hopefully mate.

Its not an overnight solution, stuff like this needs time, its only fair to judge in a couple more years time.

you dont have to run with a squad of 3 players over 3 seasons, just if you had brought in three players like that, you could have run with 3 fewer overseas players


Im sure Hudds were fairly sure of his existence prior to him playing for you considering he had already played for their academy He had also played for Sheffield and was 24 and had been in the nl2 dream team for 2 years before spending 1 year with hull kr

we are into the play-offs, which players are you expecting to bring through in the play-offs?

where are the prospects you signed 4 years ago? where are the projects?

if the academy work is so good, why do you need 10 overseas players next season?

it does take time to get an academy up to scratch, but 4 years for 1 player?

and if your academy isnt yet up to scratch, why arent you looking at players in the national leagues or on the fringes of other SL squads rather than Overseas players?

In the last 2/3 seasons we have signed or promoted several English Players including 2 who are now internationals since their move, we have given a young Saints Fullback (Hardman) and a Young Wigan winger/centre oppertunities in the Top Flight in which they would probably never of had at their respective clubs.
Do you think Scott Murrell would now be a full time SL Player with Leeds if we had not snapped him up and i never saw Cas coming in for Cockayne who is a home town lad to give him his chance, love him or hate him he is a fantastic SL Utility player for us.
Its not quite as straight forward as you all think but hey your entitled to your oppinion.

To be fair to Hull Kingston Australians...they are faced with a chicken v the egg scenario. With a bigger, better supported, financially stronger and more recently successful club on their doorstep, the need to be competative on the pitch if they are to ever catch up...and therefore they will employ whomever the RFL will let them.
It is the ultimate case of trying to keep up with the jonses

Gaela and Webster are really good, not as good as Dobson though. Newton, Vella and Clinton are not all that. Mason is not yours yet, hope he does do well though I fear he'll take early retirement. I'm surprised dobson hasn't decided to head back to the NRL, maybe he realises he's in a better comp in SL?

To what end? So that we could also do Harlequins sack cloth and ashes routine of "we're but look how many English players we've got?

Signing English players would not have improved Rovers' academy at all, simply weakened the first team with the likely result that they would not now be in SL or they would not have finished in the playoffs for the last two years and then I expect you would be the first one to complain of on field mediocrity and not contributing to the competition.

I think that Rovers board and coach have a bit better idea than you Smokey and am very happy with the way they are running the club. I just think it galls you that the club you love to hate is doing so well.

God you talk rubbish so when we was promoted we were to have a academy team full of superstars ready for super league then I'm afraid years in the shadow of our merged neighbours has seen all talent go west or to another team but now were back in the big time that talent is slowly making it's way back east but let's be fair we can't instantly be competative straight away so we need these players that we have to enable us to do so other wise we would end up like quins fighting for the wooden spoon every year maybe we are bending the rules but what club in sl don't example teams like Leeds and Warrington must be braking the salary cap but have probably done deals in contracts so that doesn't happen

and breath

give me a play off team with 10 foreigners over a non playoff team with 7 any day of the week!

This I like.

Its bettter than the Hull KR 'we have a shed load of debt, but we have a mid-table side made of ageing or unproven 2nd tier Australians, hey Mr Council build us a new stand please@
they are mediocre on the field, but they would have contributed a whole heap more had they brought in young british players.

And again, if your club was good at scouting, coaching, developing players it wouldnt weaken the first team. There are players just as good as some of the dross you have signed, you simply havent gone out and found them because you arent good at scouting, developing and coaching so you ride on the coat-tails of the NRL
of course you are, however in three years when they are behind every other club because they are trying to start doing what everybody else has been doing for the past 3 years it will be quite funny to watch you squirm. Your short-termism will bite you on the ass. Also doing so well? with your overseas dispensation and you are only qualifying for the play-offs, bit unambitious really.

exactly, so what motivation does any team have to have only 7, why dont they all go out and get 10,

and when 8 clubs have 10 better overseas players than you are going to get 11? and so on until we only have overseas players because no-one wants to bother with long-term player development because the short-term results can be acheived? and then when the standard of the league crashes because we are no longer bringing through the best british players what do we do? employ more overseas players?

YAWN

Shows what you know!

The level of debt is not a problem to Hull KR fans nor the directors that financially support the club (in exactly the same way that most other clubs are financially supported by their directors to a greater or lesser degree)



Ah, so if you were the head coach of a club in your first season of SL (with P & R still the process for staying in or being removed from SL) your first signings would not be experienced players with a proven level of ability (either British or Aussie) but inexperienced, young British players.

The absurdity of the standards you seem to expect from Hull KR just get worse Smokey.

The rules by which all SL clubs operate are not determined by Hull KR.



Perhaps your ire would be better directed at the RFL.

Ah, you go round in circles with him mate. He's obviously just got an axe to grind because he's not in the slightest bit interested by the investment and work that has gone into our youth development and scouting in recent years.

Apparently the moment we arrived in SL we should have snapped up all the unknown SL standard players that are available from the lower leagues and scouted and signed all the top youngsters in the country (those so good they'd be ready for SL by now, yet not attached to any other club at the age of 17/18

). All this despite the fact its the very lack of those very players that meant the RFL had to think long and hard about expanding to a 14 club SL.

If we did as he wants and play the likes of I'Anson and Spavin every week, he'd pull us up on something like 'not contributing to the competition'. You can't win against stubborn ignorance.