Sounds like Wests hand is being forced by their own incompetent. They have royally screwed up their salary cap several years ago by messing about with backloaded contracts.. www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/a ... ub-in-mind

Sounds like Wests hand is being forced by their own incompetent. They have royally screwed up their salary cap several years ago by messing about with backloaded contracts.. www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/a ... ub-in-mind

It's cute that you're obsessed with one of the most successful Academy systems in world rugby (if you base it on honours won by its graduates), and thank you for your concern.

If I were you though, I'd be more worried about why Wigan's Academy system is basically acting as a feeder team for the NRL rather than helping its first team to win trophies.

I know we fielded 11 from ours on Friday.

We also fielded three British lads outwith our Academy that are/were internationals (Peacock. Hardaker and Briscoe. We also rested two Academy lads htat have played international rugby (Watkins and McGuire) and had one other Academy produced international out injured (JJB)

What's your point?

Say na more

How many overseas players (in total) will be playing at Wembley on Saturday. I'm guessing that it'll be the most in a long time. Hull and HKR are merging their academies and are still bringing in more overseas players.

That's my point

They'll be 5 or 6 overseas players for Leeds on Saturday. Which is less than the 7 Wigan fielded in the 2011 Final.

For Leeds in the final it's likely you'll see 5 non-english: Moon, Kylie, Delaney, Garbutt and either Achurch or Keinhorst. When we last played your lot in the final in 2011 you fielded 7: Carmont, Richards, Finch, Leuluai, Lima, Hansen and Hoffman so it's a bit rich for a Wigan fan to make that claim.

In fact, in terms of foreigners Leeds' most likely 17 throughout this season has featured only Moon from the backs and only Aiton, Delaney and Kylie in the forwards, with most of everybody else being English (Cuthbertson has yet to declare, and has a completely legitimate and uncontroversial claim to represent England) and the majority are academy trained.

Watkins, Hall, McGuire, Sinfield, Burrow, Ward, Sutcliffe, Singleton, Ablett and JJB have all been first choice players this season - that's 10 out of 17 that have only ever played for us, and that's to ignore Handley. But you think Leeds are going to bring about the demise of the English game by bringing in a world class hooker? Have a word. Of all the clubs to have a pop at it seems strange that you'd pick Leeds.

That's not to even mention the likes of Baldwinson,Mulhern,Golding and Robbie Ward who will all be pushing for game time next year alongside Handley. Plus us having a possible 4 out of 5 of England's 3/4 line this autumn.

Yes, very worrying.

Not Sure.

How many will Wigan be playing?

Achurch also qualifies for England IIRC.

Setting aside Rogues' daft willy-waving, if we take GH's comments at face value then we've got cap space for next year but haven't got enough to commit to £175k for Farah, so if he *was* to come it would mean shifting another player out. The most likely option for this would be Achurch who is apparently on decent whack, so there would be no change in our net number of Aussie born/NRL raised players.

Apparently we offered him a few weeks ago but he declined, not going to happen imo

Not sure about that, but I have heard from a very reliable source that a deal is almost agreed with Warrington for Clark. The player himself is absolutely desperate to come.

I know that last year they spoke with Clark and agreed terms then when Warrington were trying to get out of the deal, so who know it could fail again. But me personally, I am favouring this rumour as going to happen at the moment.

I could be totally wrong about Clark but what does he offer from DH? Don't get me wrong, he's got frightening pace when he makes a brake but how good is his distribution and creating space for the runners?

I'm probably judging him to much on his form this year in a below par Warrington team, but other than the odd time he makes a break, the rest of his games isn't all that. As I said, I could be wrong, I haven't seen all that much of him. Am I?