Is this the same Hull FC that have just got Berrigan off quota and are looking overseas for a new halfback?

its the one with about half the overseas players you have,

I'll keep an eye out for their results this weekend.

How strange , I once suggested you were a Leeds Utd fan , and you said you follwed the Arsenal

youth development isnt the only option. This is the fundemental point. When you need to choose between your youngsters, or a player from the lower leagues or a fringe player at another club you are going to do one of two things, make sure your youngsters are the best or invest a lot more time and effort trying to polish a rough diamond. That isnt happening when the first option to fill a gap in the squad is Australia. If Hull KR couldnt bring in Blake Green they would still have needed to find a player from somewhere, either putting more effort into getting a top class youngster, or putting more effort into training a player from the lower leagues.

And before you say it, there are good enough players outside SL first teams to do that job for you. Keith Senior, Rob Purdham, Ade Gardner, Shaun Lunt, Danny Kirmond, Ewan Dowes, Gareth Raynor all came from outside the SL development system. There are more out there we need to find them.
you have no way of judging that. Under 18s rugby is really a terrible judge of the quality of youth development. You could have the queensland back line at 17 in an academy but if the forwards are all youngsters still developing then they will be over-run and they arent going to win many games. But if you introduced Inglis, Slater, Boyd Tonga and Folou then you would say your youth development was doing pretty well
there is plenty of work to do in every department. I sometimes think that RL suffers as a sport because of how happy people seem to be with accepting the mediocre or building it up to 'great' when it isnt.

Hull KR fail in many many areas, They can get to the level they should be, and it is doing them a disservice to say they are doing 'great' when they are where they are.

We have had this exact same conversation before when you said i had told you i was an nal fan, i didnt. Im not. I didnt tell you i was.







bookmark this thread, and then next time you can look back and see im a Leeds fan.

simple fact is NZ can win the WC with 100 players in 1st grade, England should be able to win it with 200+. Has very little to do with the number of overseas players at a club and everything to do with the RFL not doing its job in getting more kids playing at ages 5-15.

we have 250'000 registered players, the fact we cant provide 300 to fill SL squads says the problem lays elsewhere.

fyi, 200 would be an improvement from where we are at right now

Did you drop this roofs?

this season we had 6 overseas, with cusack retiring that would have taken us down to 5, so with berrigan spot freed up that puts us back on 6, so we havn't added to our number

this overseas malarky has turned into a joke, the scrapping of relegation was all about helping bring youngsters through the system, some teams still want to ignore that or just bring the odd player through for an odd game now and then.

Isn't that exactly what ' we ' said ?

The overseas thing will get better pretty quickly. As I understand it the "Overseas Trained" quota has been steadily reduced from 10 in 2008 to 6 this year and 5 for next season. However at the moment, if what I've been told is true, the majority if not all the overseas players that were under contract in SL when the new rules (Club Trained/UK Trained/Overseas Trained) were introduced in 2008 were exempt from the Overseas Trained quota. Which explains why, for example, Leeds can have 7 overseas players when the quota is only 6 for this year. But as these players slowly retire/go back to the NRL this will be reduced down to the actual level of the quota.

If any of that makes sense.

probably, but i aint trawling through 16 pages

unless certain clubs still go crawling and begging to the rfl for more special dispensation

then it becomes the fault of the RFL. Clubs will do what's best for clubs, its the RFL's job to do what's best for the game (although i still don't see how replacing players with poorer quality players due to the poor development systems at school level will improve the SL standard?)

Ok, so then they kick hull kr out of SL do you then start moaning that it is RFLs fault in some other way for not forcing Hull KR to be run in a sustainable way?

it woud be much better for everyone involved, including hull kr if they didnt make the choice to employ Australian reserve grade players

You seem to have a strange understanding of the word "sustainable".

What did you think of Rovers signing Dobson?

not really
i think he is a decent enough player, i dont think he is among the best in the country, others disagree but i dont. I think he gets the plaudits he does because he is the only real pivot Hull KR have, the better teams have 3 or 4, sometimes 5 in a match day squad, everything at Hull KR goes through him.

Look at the fantastic job Huddersfield have done, built from nothing a few years ago, now 80 mins from the GF with young many young english players,from their academy, from the fringes of other sides, and from the lower leagues.

Dream team 2 years running is not bad for a "fringe" player from Aus don't you think?



Huddersfield are doing well, they've had quite some time in SL to get to this point though haven't they? Quite a bit longer than Hull KR at least.

not bad but could be better.

whilst they have, it has taken them the entire time they have been in SL to put this in place. They also didnt have the benefit of an SL franchise.

Besides their 5th year back in SL was 2007, they went in to that season with only 6 overseas players, rather than the ten you are needing. They finished 5th

Unlikely, I'm a non-smoker.

Every player could be better. The point is that according to your exacting standards he should never have been signed, when in fact he has proven to be capable of consistent high standards and is clearly the kind of high quality player we want to see in SL. By your own admission there are players outside SL that are capable of stepping up, does this not mean that there are fringe players in the NRL that could also be excellent players if given an opportunity (in the NRL or SL), as with Dobson?



Didn't they receive a parachute payment of hundreds of thousands of pounds when relegated specifically to maintain youth development? That would mean an uninterupted financial resource and ability to develop young players from the inception of SL, which makes your 5 year comparison (apart from all the other reasons why it's nonsense) dubious.

Completely wrong. If Dobson were to go back to Aus now he still wouldnt be a first grade halfback. With his age he would likely have been cast off.

The fact we cant produce 12 halfbacks better than him is evidence of how poor our development is. One of the reasons it is poor is because at 18/19/20 players arent getting necessary game time they need because they at that stage, with 0 experience arent better than a 24 year old Michael Dobson who has 4 years SL experience.
Not at all. It is since being back in SL that Hudds have brought through Lawrence, Cudjoe, Mcgilveray, These players werent affiliated to Hudds when they were in the NLs, They have been brought in since. Since promotion they have gone out and signed Lunt, Kirmond, Raleigh and Patrick from outside SL. The have picked up young players like Carlile and Mcnally

Why can Huddersfield find 3 british halfbacks but Hull KR cant find one? Brough and Robinson are clearly good enough for an SL side, Mcnally is clearly good enough to be given a shot, he is now 19 perfect age to be stepping up to first grade level yet Hull KR need to go out and sign a reserve grade halfback like Blake Green to go with a reserve grade halfback like Michael Dobson.

If your youth development isnt good enough yet why not give a shot to 21 year old Kyle Wood, he is moving to Cas at the end of this year from Hudds? or 18 year old Cain Southernwood who got massive raps at the Wildcats and is an England Academy international, he has moved to the Bulls?
Isnt Tansey rumoured to be available? Can do a decent job at halfback, he is young, british, and played 21 games in leeds 2007 title winning season. 18 in their 2008 SL winning season.
Matty Smith is moving to salford at the end of the year, again, why not get him in. Clearly good enough to play for Hull KR
Richie Myler moved at the end of last year why didnt you get him?

You could look at the lower leagues, give a shot to Thackray or Allan?

If you do need more time to get your youth development in order (and i think 5 years is enough to be honest, many many many players are regulars as teenagers) then in the meantime go british, it worked out with Watts, you have shown its not that difficult why not do it again?

because you can't fill a team with untested 19 year olds. Dobson was playing 1st grade and their fans were very disappointed he left (he has since proven to be one of the best 1/2 backs in SL), Green has played the equivalent of a full season of NRL and played for Asutralian schoolboys (not a bad pedigree!), neither were "reserve grade". We tried a young british half back in fact we had two, one we let go due to a poor attitude, the other turned out not to be good enough in our coaches opinion. I am sure if there had been another 24 year old with Greens pedigree, available for the same salary and a year of SL under his belt available we would have signed them.

In the end I return to my point, as a fan of HKR I dont give a frick what colour passport they have if we are succesful.

Is he? Since when?