We can't really take the moral high ground on that one Dave when we have a shared academy with a club in the lower leagues.

Better than none and we are going a great job bringing players through and giving them gametime through the reserves, so I think we can.

Better than none, but still worse than Wakefield, Huddersfield & Widnes.

Any legacy from the merged academy has yet to be seen, the players in the first team or one the edges were from FC's academy.

Personaly I'm not a fan, but you can't critise it until we have seen the results, in 2/3 years time we might be hailing it as a great success.

None of those clubs mentioned have a reserve team, so are there players aged over 19 and not ready for SL, getting enough game time for development

On a side note how long will Hadley be out for ? And will he go back to wakey?

We'll take him back, your club obviously don't need him.

To be honest not sure with Taylor but he looked to struggle after making a tackle in the opening 5 mins at Newcastle so maybe took a knock and is being rested to allowing time to recover.

First sub 10K crowd on Friday?

Little away support, don't see many walk ins and quite a few gone to Spain already.

Rawsthorne and Talanoa play one game each this weekend, I thought we couldn't play anymore youngsters due to the cap?

That's what a players Dad was telling people. Who knows, would be good to see him play though.

It's only the top 25 earners at the club who count on the cap, so perhaps Rawsthorne doesn't count towards it?

that's probably bang on

Would imagine a few don't count. Jack Wray might be worth a shout for a run out especially with Connor apparently carrying that hand injury.

radford said we'd had to send abdul, naughton and hadley out on loan due to the salary cap

That we had backloaded contracts last year so we could squeeze the whole squad in is having an effect this, that and AP was clearly not going to spend full whack on a marquee player for this and probably next also. When you hear Radford making a particular point to mention that the club only just broke even last year despite the CC win and the Bulldogs paying much of Pritchard's salary I think that came/comes as no surprise.

As previously mentioned I think we have a better balanced squad this year however. Connor is certainly offering more than Yeaman (& Griffin at moment in time), young forwards are having a chance to shine/more responsibility on Green/Thompson/Washbrook (as would be Hadley if he were playing)

Pritchard whilst he did have impact at times put more pressure on other players because he simply wasn't doing long enough stints, he also was hugely behind others like Thompson in the tackling stats, again that put pressure on other players to take up his slack during a game.

Should have plenty enough to see off Leigh but the mental attitude/preparation has to be so much better than against Saints. This is were were are falling down the most as it's clear we have the talent.

You mean like the Academy we tried to run , but got sick of having to cancel matches because the RFL refused to let us join the SL comp ?

That one ?

As you well know , you get 1 st pick of the juniors in your area , we don't , we've had players on our scholarship like Joe Burgess and Tommy Makinson , can we retain them ? No , so we were constantly try to make silk purses out of ( no disrespect ) sows ears

my heart bleeds.....really it does. Poor Gateshead Thunder.....you LUCKY SODS

If only Leigh had some fans.

And the few they do have are a really obnoxious bunch. I'd almost rather have Rovers back.

Not fair that. I was impressed with how friendly they were when we visited their place. That and they have a much better ground are only 2 (of many) reasons that I'd rather they stayed in SL at the dobbins expense.

Agreed. We took six young kids to Leigh and their fans were really nice to us. There's no way I'd take 5 year olds to Rovers.

My post above was a dig at Leigh, just facts, in fact it was more a dig at the Hull fans who won't attend tonight by choice.

I went to Leigh and their fans were great, I think a few got a bit over excited at the start of year and went over the top in predicting how well they would do, but one of the few sets of fans that didn't use the ref as an excuse when we beat the,

Good luck to Nick Rawsthorne making his debut tonight.

just hope he is partnered with Tuimavave and not Griffin.
Nick is also a top goal kicker.Just hope we score some tries for him to add the points.
it will be good to have some real speed on the wing

Think you are on your own there