having hard gentles comments reagrds future siginigs, and the development of the academy players, i found it interesting to find how many academy players are in wigans first team squad this year....
apart from there imports the squad is rammed with young english local talent, a team which has taken them to glory .....
salary cap restraints have made this possible, but the development of local kids is the future...id say that other than wigans non-english players, the majority of the squad will be on not alot i recon....
prescott,tuson,dudson etc etc, cant surely have a saslary as much as some players.......
the future lies with young kids, it may take a while, but the future at fc is bright

well said, as it should be.
for too long clubs have bought their way to sucess and hence why we are shiiiit internationally because our youth systems were garbage so there was no production line to GB.
things are changing across SL now and more youth are coming through all over.
cant say i will miss all the crap or over the hill aussies who came here for a big last deal or cause they could not get a gig back in Oz, the quota should be used to bring in two or three class acts as i am sue PG will do from what I read and hear and see presently

what ever happens its been a long time since i felt as comfortable with FC as i do now, BUT i am also a realist that this will not be achieved in one season....

thing is, its not only wigan, leeds have won grand finals in the same way!!!! bringing kids through with top import sigings...

i wonder how many will have the patience this sort of rebuild requires

This wigan way is a fairly new thing, apart from OLoughlin they had a policy of getting rid and bringing in any old players upto a few years ago whilst clearing out the kids

Robinson, Aspinwall, Brown, Briscoe, Wild, Ainscough to name but a few

agree hutchie, but like leeds, theve won championships with a local team.......made up of young kids...facts dont lie..

The RFL could accelerate this by reducing the quota, thus forcing the clubs' hands regarding British players.

cant see taht happening for a while though to be fair

After 32 years of throwing money at big name signing Leeds finally won the 2004 gf with 10 academy players.

exactly my point

We tried it for a bit, in the 2006 final eliminator didn't we have about 10 players who'd come through our academy?

We just let them all go and didn't replace them with any quality or young players.

I totally agree with bringing on as many homegrown youth players as possible. Is it not our problem that far too few of our academy players make the grade either with us or at new clubs e.g Hall, Lee, Washbrook, Burnett, G Horne to name our most promising prospects. Even decimated by injuries only Crooks, Nicklas and Houghton started vs Wigan. Don't know the reason but over the last 40 years Hull as a city has only produced a handful of international quality players. This is why we have to pay top dollar for over the top Aussies or transfer fees for English talent.

I mentioned this today on Twitter. It seems to me that Gentle and Pearson have a clear strategy about where they want the club to go and it involves buying young british players. The positive is that it should help to bring us longevity rather than a quick fix. The negative though is that it will take two years at least so fans will have to patient. It's also common sense with the changes in the NRL as we are going to see less and lee quality players coming over. We have to trust Gentle and AP to get it right and need to give them time.

I don't think all fans will like this approach but it does mean sustainability over a longer period.

totally agree with all that

I've mentioned this before but: there is a very distinct problem with player development in Hull and that has been the case for many decades, not just years.

We have amateur youth and open-age teams that can hold their own against anything that the West Yorkshire or North West Counties can provide. It all seems to go wrong when they are identified by either of the two professional clubs. I'm not sure what they are doing but whatever it is, it's certainly not developing the players.

How many times has the city of Hull produced an international-class halfback over the last 40 years?

Neither club have invested sufficiently in youth development. Hull are starting to improve but unless you employ top class coaches at this level then you will never maximise the potential