www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... shead.html from this it looks like gateshead are going to be the same as celtic crusaders by end of season. not many home grown players.

www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... shead.html from this it looks like gateshead are going to be the same as celtic crusaders by end of season. not many home grown players.

Well hearing the interviews with Players and Coaching Staff on SKy against Batley and Sheff i only picked out Local accents!!!
Good Luck to them dont think theyll be bothering the fax DO YOU?

Carcassonne to Gateshead....

I feel desperately sorry for the lad

Good Signing this for Gateshead, i know i have said this before but WE need a HalfBack if he is going too Them no offence, then surely he would have wanted to come here.

WE probably could not afford him. plus we not doing bad with what we got.

Is Ben Black not doing the business for you??

Russel Aitken - he was well out of his depth in the NRL and I'm guessing nobody else in the NRL rated his chances of making it as he wasn't offered a sniff of a contract.

He was poor at the Storm and I never saw any potential in him (obviously somebody did though or he wouldn't have been at the Storm).

He only played in the GF and WCC as Storm didn't have anybody else resembling a hooker (note we lost both games )

I don't think the boys will be troubled by him although he'll probably go alright in the Gateshead side.

From what I've seen of Ben Black he looks a far better player than Aitken.

The Thunder team on Sunday was
Thorman, Peers, Parker, Ryan Clarke, Rhys Clarke, Dave Vernon and Mark Dack (all local lads)
Payne, Knowles, Cording & Andrews (Yorkshire) & Sanderson (Cumbria)

Of the foreign players:
Nash & McAlpine have British passports, Branighan has a Maltese passport and Cakaka Fou is Fijian but has applied for (if he hasn't got it already) a British passport..

Henderson (our only quota player on Sunday) was born in Torquay and plays for Scotland

So 7 local players and 12 of the 17 from England....

We would love to play a team of local lads but the rugby league infrastucture in the NE isn't as developed as it is in the heartlands.

Must admit, this is one of the stranger rulings of the quota system. Born & raised (well for a few years) in this country, yet is still classed as a foreigner. Wonder if he has a British passport?

There are indeed four more Australian born players on the way. If in 10-15 years time Thunder are an established team with a good home grown side then this will be looked back on as a successful way to build something. Perhaps that wont happen but you never know.

For years we have struggled to bring in players from other parts of this country, and have relied on players from Oz, most have had British/European passports and are available to everyone.

Interesting to note that your website shows a squad of 22 of which at least 4 are foreign - almost 20%. Perhaps, Swifty, you could enlighten us North Eastern interlopers into your game, what is the correct percentage of foreigners in a squad so we may adjust accordingly.

I personally have no problem with overseas players being here, all I want to do is support my team playing a sport I love and if it takes a few Aussies to help us along the way then so be it.

Just for the record I was there on Sunday. Fax are the best side we have played this season by a long way and you have a good set of fans, there was some good banter on Sunday - just the way it should be.

Best of luck for the rest of the season...........