without all of them? probably an initially large fall in quality followed by a period of building the game back up to its level which would unfortunately take about 20-30 years.

Without about 40-60%, an initial small fall in quality, followed by no noticeable difference in 2/3 years and improvement from there onwards putting us fairly quickly into a better position.

Agreed.

Dont worry smokey clubs like cas are there to show everyone the way

Not just quantity but quality too.

It would be good if we could compare this to the number of home grown players in teams squads, i'll do cas (with number of games played for club)

huby-156 games
arundel- 10 games
thompson-17 games
holmes-5 games
orr- 191 games
davies- 1 game
owen- 72 games
milner- 4 games
massey- 8 games
walker- 7 games
clarke- 0 games
harris-0 games
orange-0 games

And out of all of these how many ADD anything to the game over here. Going on what they have done or their potential. Some may prove me wrong as we have yet to see them but lmore than 50% add nothing to the game over here except keep young players out.

Bradford ,Kearney,
Cas Chase,
Cats Greenshields, Sa,
Crusaders , Witt, Sammut,
Harlequins Dorn, Randall,
Huddersfield O'Donnell, Fa'alogo, Faiumu
Hull FC Fitzgibbon, Manu,
Hull KR Mason, Vella, Dobson, Newton, Galea, Clinton
Leeds Webb, Leuluai, Buderas, Lauititi, Cross, Hauraki
Salford Cashmere,
Saints , Soliola, Perry, Puletua, Flannery
Wakefield
Warrington Hodgson, King, Monaghan, Monaghan,
Wigan Carmont, Richards, Leuluai, Lima, Hoffman, Finch, Roberts

41 players out of an original total of 95

I agree totally with the point your making too many of them just aren't up to standard and certainly shouldn't be earning top dollar here and keeping young english kids out of the game.

From an Hull point of view though O'Meley was very good for us last season.

Widders has played well for Cas in the years he's been over here and has become a fans' favourite. Additionally, he does a lot in the Community. May not be an household name but then the players that tend to perform well over here rarely are.

Why cant they just put a cap of say 5 genuine non federation trained players?? Then everyone else has to be home grown or fed trained (including French). Is it illegal or something? Other sports seem to do it, Cricket or ice Hockey for instance. The rules as they are are so flimsy.

just a question to ponder - due to EEC employment regulations could an SL or C/C1 club have team made up of only french or other EEC member state players ?

Well that's what the rules are, however, clubs get around them with exemptions...

Bit harsh on Glenn Morrison DG. A true pro, class player and coaches the juniors at Wakey. If thats not adding something then I'm not sure what is.

Also how can you say Mason at Hull KR adds anything, hes only arriving in the next wweek or so and no one knows how he'll settle over here. I hope he's at his best as he will be great to watch but we won't know until the season gets underway. Same goes for all other new signings you've listed.

Ben Cross for Leeds looked like a quality addition yesterday, no nonsense tough and hard working, it was only a friendly but the signs look good with him, Delaney looks like he's shed a few pounds too, was disappointed with him last season but I think everyone will see a different player this year.

You are right about Morrison but he is at the End of his career now. If he is coaching then fine but i would rather see a good young player on the Wakefield roster.

As for Mason if he lives up to his rep, puts bums on seats he may turn out to be a good signing.

Cannot really comment on Cross as yet to see him. Hopefully he will turn out to be a better buy that fatty Eastmond.

As for Widders at cas, i would bow to Fully's judgement. BUT i would say that another good young local lad coming through would do more for RL: in Cas than Widders

I doubt there is a junior player with the ability Morrison posesses at this moment in time, however with him mentoring and guiding player x then he may well help develop him into as good a or even better player than himself. What you need to realise this season at Wakey is that the majority of the squad are going to be relative youngsters with not so much first team experience. Morrison is going to be one of the most important people at our club this coming season in my opinion and quite a lot will be resting on his shoulders. I beieve he is of the right temperament and stature to handle this and bring out the best in our 'project' players.

Shut up.

All overseas players no matter what they do as regards coaching or community work are denying a british player full time training , as to their quality , well that is a subjective judgement , and strangely every fan seems able to find some mitigating circumstanes for their clubs players

Get rid of all the lot , end of

You've got the wrong Anderson. The one we've still got is only 25 / 26 and played very well last year.

to be fair Solomona is world class too

And then you end up with an inferior competition in which English players cannot develop as far they otherwise could.

There needs to be a gradual reduction, especially closing loopholes wherever possible or maybe making overseas players cost more on the salary cap in some way so as to try and deter clubs from signing overseas players. But much more importantly this has to be backed up with a massive increase in the quality of coaching of young English players from age 4 all the way up to the pro ranks. There are big failures in a lot of the coaching at virtually every level from my experience.

I personally think we could lose maybe 30% of our overseas players immediately and see a negligible drop in standards. However i think that when we do see that drop, and clubs start doing more, i think we will get more out of what we have, but also we will be forced to expand the player pool. And i cant see why that wouldnt put us at the very least the level we are now very very quickly.

Moving forward from that needs more from the RFL at youth level, and huge amounts more from clubs at scouting, training and coaching levels, from scholarship to first team. We barely scratch the surface in coaching and preparation the Aussies do.

phased out over a short-term period yes IMO

Would this be one of those ' subjective ' judgements ?

I'd probably agree with that, if clubs had stuck to the spirit of the rules and only had 5 overseas signings this season I think that would be about right. That would mean 27 fewer overseas players this season (going by steve_norton's original post), as you say I don't think we'd see a significant drop in standards and we would be forced to develop more English players or further develop the English players we already have. However the coaching systems as they currently stand aren't anywhere close to good enough to deal with a much bigger drop in overseas players at the moment.


Absolutely


There needs to be much more done by the pro-clubs, especially SL clubs, at assisting and improving the coaching and player development at youth and junior level in the amateur clubs in their area. Some pro-clubs are pretty good, some are pathetic. Sadly the pretty good ones are more than outnumbered by the pathetic ones.
The general standard of coaching at junior and youth level is utter rubbish, and is patchy at scholarship and academy level. Although the scholarship and academy levels suffer from the poor skill levels of the players they receive through the doors.
Schools rugby I don't know much about, but all the signs are fairly good and that it's steadily becoming more and more widespread which is always a good thing (although how the SSP funding cut will affect this is yet to be seen).

But it's got to be joint effort from the clubs, the RFL and BARLA to attempt to massively improve the quality of coaching at junior and youth levels.

So in brushing us to one side you forgot about Patten Henry and Holdsworth ?

Holdsworth would walk into any SL side same with patten and henry.

More ' subjective ' judgement

It gets everywhere