You say that, but the possibility hasn't really been considered has it? An immediate and rabid assumption that the panel have been complicit in engineering an outcome with the sole purpose of disadvantaging Hull KR. As opposed to focusing scarce central academy funding where the marginal returns are greatest ie removing spend where there are geographical overlaps and awarding elite status to the better candidate.

Mike Smith is RFL Vice President. This appointment was met more with "Nice one, that won't do Rovers any harm" than "OMG the RFL is bent as" I suspect.

While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat.

Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo.

On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting.

Quote ="Mild Rover"While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat. Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo. On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting. '" I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.

Quote ="Mild Rover"While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat. Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo. On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting. '" I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.

Quote ="Mrs Barista"icon_biggrin.gif I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.'" Social media isn’t really my scene, beyond dedicated RL sites. But from what I hear that sounds plausible. I mean, the tone on here was more ‘ha, ha dobbins’ than ‘protect the community clubs’, which doesn’t frame the substantive arguments particularly well. I see Mr Manson’s point. However, blame is a very useful political concept, whether justified or not. Like the outrage some posters have aimed at the council for not standing up Allam on maintenance and management of the KCOM stadium. I can’t be bothered, but I bet if I went back through that thread, I could find things at around the level of ‘spineless’.

Quote ="Mrs Barista"icon_biggrin.gif I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.'" Social media isn’t really my scene, beyond dedicated RL sites. But from what I hear that sounds plausible. I mean, the tone on here was more ‘ha, ha dobbins’ than ‘protect the community clubs’, which doesn’t frame the substantive arguments particularly well. I see Mr Manson’s point. However, blame is a very useful political concept, whether justified or not. Like the outrage some posters have aimed at the council for not standing up Allam on maintenance and management of the KCOM stadium. I can’t be bothered, but I bet if I went back through that thread, I could find things at around the level of ‘spineless’.

did Rovers fail their
working with children application ?

I'm pretty certain that had Hull been excluded the first Rovers reaction would have been 'haha curly turds' from grown adults - it's what we do. The positioning of the whole process and decision making as uniquely motivated by a corrupt "sicko" Hull fan trying to dismantle Hull KR's youth academy is narcissistic and paranoid IMO given we don't know the content of the submissions. Whilst it's nice to spread the money thinly for optics purposes I suppose in the end it comes down to the purpose of the academy. Is it to allow more young players to be involved in the game and be affiliated to a professional club, or is it to create a genuine first team pathway for the "elite" in a catchment and optimise their progression? If it's the latter then surely it makes sense to focus resource where it has the best chance of delivering first team player outcomes through the local pool. If you have a poor track record on this, whether through having, say very few homegrown players in your squad or "poaching" players from other catchments, then you can see why decisions have been reached. That's not Dean Andrew's fault, IMO.

On the stadium it's the obvious thing to blame the Allams, or the council, and we like to do both of course. But it's mostly a useless exercise other than making us feel a little galvanisation.

Of course, many would. Credit to the Wakefield fans I’ve seen for showing more empathy - possibly resulting from them having expected to be the ones getting what they regard as the poopie end of the stick.



Indeed, but without being very active on social media, I don’t know how representative that is of fan opinion on and off those platforms. My safe guess would be somewhat but not completely. Without condoning it, it doesn’t surprise me that some people have reacted emotionally or even aggressively without knowing the full facts - it is what some do. I condemn anybody calling Dean Andrew a ‘sicko’ or similar. Given his links to Hull FC, and assuming he doesn’t (didn’t

) have similar links to Hull KR, I do think it would have been wise for him remove himself from those discussions. I doubt he’s an idiot and he may very well have done that. If he did, it’d probably be a good idea to gently leak that to the press - to not do so would be taking collective responsibility a bit far imo. Even if he didn’t, highlighting flaws in the process isn’t even half the ‘battle’.




the current youth development pathways in RL appear very, very inefficient to me - but it depends how you measure it and why clubs or fans want an academy. These tweaks don’t fundamentally change what I think is a broken system and some slightly unhealthy attitudes that arise from it. With a bit of intelligence and imagination, I think that a club that is now free to adopt a different approach could do better by the measures I would use.



For the reasons ‘Wilf’ has laid out, it is not the the councils fault, IMO. Hull FC are part of the community but are not the community. My parents don’t want to pay more council tax so that a council employee can have the privilege of scraping bird off seats at the KCOM. They don’t know it yet but I shall tell them later. Taking on the risk

of being landed with such responsibility seems imprudent both financially and politically. On the behaviour of the current owners of the SMC, you have my genuine (though impotent) sympathy.

As someone said to me earlier , maybe they’ve given FC the licence as there’s more FC academy graduates in the Dobbins team than from their own!

https://twitter.com/hullfcofficial/stat ... 51488?s=19 Not academy, but schools partnership related - good to see.

https://twitter.com/hullfcofficial/stat ... 51488?s=19 Not academy, but schools partnership related - good to see.

The footage just goes to show how much (often unheralded) work is undertaken by the community team.
Got some really good people involved within the club.

Interesting to hear Ralph Rimmer tonight on the length of time the process has been underway (3 years) and seems that the primary aim is quality of academies rather than quantity of participants. And that currently academies aren't delivering high enough quality so can't continue to just do what's historically been done. I guess time will tell whether the decisions will deliver.

I think it would possibly be a fair shout to say the number of talented young players coming through on the whole had been in a steady decline for a few years now. So in some ways I can see the logic in trying to actually make a change in terms of focusing more intently on smaller groups to then see a greater number make it as opposed to diluting the groups and seeing less make it

I’m not sure the lack of academies for a period helped or the farcical set up when AP invested heavily in the last reincarnation of the Academy only to see the fixtures become a lottery as to whether there would be an opposing team to play each week.

I still think it’s imperative that all SL clubs should have a proper Acadamy set up and it should be mandatory. Too many clubs for too long have neglected that part of the game due to cost saving or wanting to use that money for the first team.

I think the Elite Licensing may yet prove to be a good thing but hope they have a review period in 2 or 3 years to see the impact good and bad on the game. Ones things for sure and that is it’s a very emotive subject.

Rfl stated they were in regular dialogue with SL clubs and gave 2 extended deadlines.
No one seems to have mentioned kr have in their sl history not really produced many regular sl quality players.
Indeed 8 of their current first team have 3 fc players plus 5 recruited from Bradford.
Whilst I don’t agree with the “ elite “ branding
Clearly something isn’t working within academy structures.

I dunno, Watts and Tag are pretty decent.

Say there are kids of that calibre who don't get into the Academies at Wakefield or Hull. What is their route now into the top flight? Could a kid from East Hull, Cas or Fev still achieve their potential?

But that is not a very good return at all is it, 2 from several years ago?

I could understand the derision if Rovers had been and were producing players that were capable of playing at the highest level but they haven't. So something isn't right and the Elite Academies should be about what's best for the youth players and giving them the best chance in the game and not what's best for the club.

Cator. Lawler.

Okay that's only 4. But 4 is still higher than zero.

Without the KR academy, how is the next Joe Cator going to get into our first team and the England Knights squad?

And it's not just Rovers. Cas and Bradford produce a lot of players. Can we guarantee those kids that would have come through definitely will?

I hope I'm wrong but I have a bad feeling about this.

https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/hu ... direction/ I guess there's only so often you can repeat the words without tangible results. #jamtomorrow

https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/hu ... direction/ I guess there's only so often you can repeat the words without tangible results. #jamtomorrow

Watts came from the Cas academy not Rovers.

I think it's a mistake,but some Rovers fans asking for Pearson to come out in support, is it likely that Rovers would publically support Hull if it was the other way around?

I think with all the pressure the RFL will have to fold and allow teams that want an elite academy to do so, maybe have it themselves initially.

Yes I'm sure they would, just like how they supported us in 1999.

It's just elitism

How many professional players have been produced that have made a career out of the sport, it doesn't matter how good they are or if they've played international rugby, who are the RFL to take career pathways away?

Reading the comments I'm cringing abit at our fans attitude where it seems it's more important rovers suffer than the actual career pathways of young rugby league players, it's all box ticking. Does anyone have the number of players produced by the city that have played professionally as that's the more important fact rather than just stating watts and Taylor

I dont think that are many Hull fans laughing at Rovers, most I've read have been in support of Rovers and Cas.

I Agree with that I don't know any who are laughing just lamenting once again the inadequacies of the RFL! Its just a catalogue of mistake after mistake, born out of self interest and talking down to the fans (their customers). the arrogance shone through last night in Rimmers interview. I know a lot won't concur with this but for me you can see how the owners of Super League Clubs, a group of business men used to running viable and profit orientated organisations in the commercial world outside the game, want to distance themselves from such chaos can't you?

Any academy is only as good as the talent they have to work with.
The real issue is the actual number of young people playing the game.
We are constantly being told that Hull is a hot bed for RL yet my experience from watching my son progress from the age of 6 to open age does not tally with that image.
At the age of 6 to 8 there where about 10 teams in total in Hull, Beverley and Holderness. By the age of 14 that was down to 4 teams with the odd friendly against one club who couldn't regularly raise a team.
That's a maximum of 90 to 100 boys playing the game at that particular age group. I would suggest if we want to create an Australian style conveyor belt of talent then we desperately need to increase the playing pool. 100 boys is hardly enough to feed one SL club let alone two.
The RFL and SL clubs themselves have to share some blame for this. The community game for as long as I can remember has been financially on its knees with little or no help from either SL or the RFL, either financial or the promotion of this great game.
The game at this level survives because of parents and volunteers.

It also has to be said that the behaviour of my club and HKR to wards these young people is scandalous. From a pool of around 100 boys they are going to have pick a significant number just to create a team, many of which I would respectfully suggest have little or no hope of ever becoming a full time professional RL player. They are persuaded for the clubs own selfish reasons to go down the academy road and chase an unrealistic dream. At 18 the inevitable happens and they are released missing out on an Apprenticeship or University. Disillusioned they are usually lost to the game.

Perhaps efforts should be channelled into creating greater participation numbers and an academy system that allows the vast majority of the young men to also carve out a career outside RL.

dont think watts played for cas academy, he was a featherstone lions junior and came to kr at 16, stand to be corrected

And now the RFL are trying to push through a £20-£30 'membership fee' that every player, coaches and even volunteers have to pay directly to them on top of the subs to their community club.