Correct Ian, there are players that are better than service area/scholarship/academy ones who do not get the chance or the credit due to them sticking with the clubs they have grown up at

How young do we identify talent? I'm a primary teacher and I could point out lads who are going to be serious sportsmen at nine or ten; we get inundated with City and Local FA scouts looking for the next footy star; FC don't do the same thing. 15 is too late to get hold of someone in my opinion.

perhaps the main amateur teams are more interested in outdoing each other??.it does seem there is a link between fc and west hull,but that's just one club!

I know a couple of players that where on Hull's books at 11, (first year of secondary).

As other have said, maybe Crooks and Harman leaving will imrprove the ammount of players who make it.

We should like Leeds, Wigan and Saints be getting one player a season to make it as a top SL player, in the last 10 years I can think of only Houghton and Briscoe who have come through our system to really make it, this isn't good enough.

Some very good talent comign through at under 16 and 15 level, lets see what they can do.

Apart from the players signed on look out for Lee Williams (SH) and Josh Bowden(prop) making big impacts in the next couple of years.

I did here a rumour that we have juts lost one of best players in the under 15's called Ryan Hampshire (from wakey area) to Wigan, tipped to be one of the best players in country, not sure how true it is.

I don't know how we compare to other clubs but Lee Richardson's point is a really good one in the context of SL as a whole. In Oz the feeder clubs are not loking to emmulate those in the NRL competition , they know that theirs is a distinctly separate competition. They look to achieve success in winning their leagues and cups but probably the most kudos comes from creating NRL players. I noticed that a feeder club has just switched allegiance from Brisbane to the Storm and have signed a "new 3 year deal". I don't know exactly how it works but it seems to make sense to me and means that there is a decent competition for young players to play in , time for them to develop after age 20 and a mutual benefit for both the feeder and recipient club. We have loose arrangements but as long as clubs have ambition to get into the next bracket whatever that may be they're bound to try to hang on to thier talent and perhaps bring in journeymen to bolster their position which if there are too many reduces the places for developing players. It would be easier to get the young kids on board if there was somehwhere for them to play even if they hadn't quite made it by age 20. Currently a lot of those discarded I think probably leave the game.

Yes I was going of on a tangent regards the previous poster comments!

The top 3 or 4 teams dominating player selection etc has been going on locally for donkeys years in fact I witnessed it first hand playing junior football over 20 years ago and know of it happening in junior rugby league now. Selectors encouraging players to leave a 'lesser' team is not new and probably not unique to our city either. I can imagine the frustration of coaches who are seeing their better players been poached after investing alot of time and effort into developing them.

My angle was more on how the 'big' clubs develop these players and what their goals are or the future. Is it solely to be the best amateur team in the city and win trophies or do they regard a player making it in Super League as the ultimate achievement?

Which may then be one of the biggest problems in young player development.

If the top clubs in Hull stock pile the best players then I assume most of their league games are non events?

Does winning most weeks by 50 plus points help develop the players? It will certainly help develop a young kids ego when he keeps scoring 5 or 6 tries a game against 'lesser' opposition but what happens when his team come up against a West Yorkshire side who have players of his same level who are able to defend well and ask questions in attack? I am sure some players rise to the challenge but maybe the lack of an intense week on week league competition breeds a soft underbelly with certain players?

Is it the same in the West Riding and Lancashire, do they have a small number of dominant teams or is the talent more equally spread therefore creating a more intense competition?

For open age it should be about winning - these are independent amateur clubs. If you want feeder clubs for young pros, you need semi-independent pro clubs. For younger players I agree, it should be about developing and having fun.
Rovers signed 9 players to '1st pro deals' earlier in the year - 2 from East Hull, but 3 from Holderness Vikings and 4 from West Yorkshire, so maybe things are changing.

Off on a bit of a tangent, I read an interview with Jodie Broughton and Ben Jones-Bishop, who were at Queens together when they were 14. Chucked out of their League for building a super team, apparently, they played in the East Riding League for a bit, which they described as 'a bit poor'. They had to move to the Lancashire league to get some competition. Not that surprising - W. Yorks and Lancs are much more populous. But when you see the best young players at Hull and Rovers are probably T. Briscoe and Watts respectively, then the value in looking beyond Hull (as well, not instead of!) is clear to see.

Rocky has left for Wigan.

who is taking over from crooks and harman??? hope it's someone a bit younger,along the Webster type of coach??someone to encourage them instead of hurling abuse at them might help(i saw and heard crooks do this a cpl of times at west hull when the academy played there last season).just thought the kids were a bit nervy of him at times.

Crooks and Harman

Damn, we got none left now then

Mel is still doing it until the New Year.

So how do we make the East Riding competition stronger?

Queens ARLFC have been chucked out of a number of competitions but that's the first time I've heard it was because they were too good.

Tough question. My point really was just that Hull and East Yorks is a shallower well to draw from than the places that say 'ginnel' instead of 'tenfoot'. It only has to support 2 SL clubs, but being smaller might tend to be more cyclic - maybe just that year was a bit poor. And Queens had, according to the interview in RLW, been considered too strong for West Yorks.

I'm very far from an expert, but at that age, I don't think it is about raising the intensity of competition, just trying to get kids to develop with good coaching and letting them have fun.

My suspicion is that we're just seeing a bit of batch to batch variation, rather than a systemic problem. Not every local generation can be golden, but by looking further afield Hull and Rovers can hopefully balance that out.

You look at the successful teams of recent years (including Hull in the middle of the decade) and there was always base of good homegrown players in the team. I know Rovers get stick for bringing in antipodeans, but in the short term the alternative hasn't been loads of good local youngsters as we were starting from scratch and the Smokey doctrine of losing nearly every week for 3 years would have been suicidal. To take another step we need, for example, for Scott Taylor to come on like Liam Watts has, for Sheriff, Cox and Bell to then follow him. They might or might not, but we'll only be serious and regular contenders once we get a generation that do.

I have seen this first hand I lost count of how many players at any level were happy just wearing a West Hull(Other teams are available) Tracksuit even though they got nowhere near the pitch.

I personally think its down to coaching at FC & Rovers. If you look at youth teams such as west hull etc that near enough always have some youth teams in yorkshire and national cup finals. At west Hull the u14's and u16's both got the national cup finals last season. I also think u13's got to yorkshire cup final and the u16's won the competition. Im pretty sure other clubs in the hull area have been successful against outer town teams but when they get beyond 16 when they get signed up professionally they are nowhere to be seen. What does that tell you then???

some kids develop faster than others, some get signed at 16 and never make it and leave the game,the hull area is very strong after U16 ,at U18 level with myton warriors and west hull the best 2 sides in yorkshire same at U17 cottingham tigers and west hull and some of these players may come though to academy level this year . Hull look to be improving coaching at scholarship and changing staff at academy level so we should see if its the coaching or maybe just not enough quality about. But having watched alot of games at these levels all over the youth game i havent seen better players at other clubs nationally , but they seem to get players coming though

I wonder how much time Hull FC players spend at local clubs like West Hull?

Many of the "old boys" can be seen in Wigan St Pats clubhouse and on the training field. Even as a seasoned, top international, Sean Edwards was hardly away from the place.

Player development is a two-way street. Pro clubs must do more for the amateur youth clubs than just throw a few quid their way, if they sign any developing talent

I totally agree, we need to get out young players right which in turn will raise the intensity of the competition anyway. The sad thing is we dont have the finances or desire to get kids younger playing the game. (in schools for example)

I'd like to see us working more with kids aged 12-13 about the mental side of the game and diet etc. I think playing the game first and foremost has to be about enjoying it but i think we need to start making it a way of life from an earlier age.

I'm not sure what the answer is around increasing skill and developing decent ball playing halves. (which is a big issue imo)

Its Ok going on about West Hull stockpiling the best players, but ive asked this question before and people have scratched there heads to answer, name the last few West Hull players to make it.

Thats a good point when you compare them to Wigan St Pats who churn players out year after year. Hull signed a good crop from Wests this year and it will be interesting to watch their progression over the next few years, as it will the crop that Rovers signed from Isberg last year.

This article about De La Salle Caringbah Junior RL and their "old boys" ( which include Adam Dykes who's sons are now playing there ) shows the different attitude that the junior clubs have in Oz. Their ambition is to produce professional players that go onto First Grade , SOO and International standards and those players retain an affinity for the club. www.theleader.com.au/news/local/ ... 02763.aspx

This article about De La Salle Caringbah Junior RL and their "old boys" ( which include Adam Dykes who's sons are now playing there ) shows the different attitude that the junior clubs have in Oz. Their ambition is to produce professional players that go onto First Grade , SOO and International standards and those players retain an affinity for the club. www.theleader.com.au/news/local/ ... 02763.aspx

at the age of 16 - 18, maybe a lot of players fall into the temptations of beer, girls, and drugs and night clubs.
its a shame because in the age of the franchise and no relagation i thought more younger kids would be given a shot and a chance to stake a claim in the first teams,
the pressure on clubs to win too, means older more experienced players will usually be picked before a promising kid.

In my primary School we might see someone from FC Community team once a year; conversely we regularly have Union Development Officers in willing to run sessions every week for us. We run a rugby league club which has tournaments every half term, but have never had any local league clubs pitch up to offer support.