Quote: Mr. Zucchini Head "You seem to be going in the same direction that we did 2 or 3 years back. We made the final in 2006 and backed it with 4th place in 07. Then we lost our main play maker, our full back and lots of experience in Swain and Mcmenemy, and rather than going out and adequately replacing these players we pinned our hopes on what we already had even though it was clear they weren't really good enough. We binned 10 players this year (if you include Broughton and Cordoba) and you need to do similar to get back to the top.'"
The difference lies in the reasons why we haven't "adequately replaced" Long and Gilmour, in terms of splashing the cash on big name signings:
a) We haven't the cash spare to do so due to-
i) Current Stadium issues; having to continue to lose money maintaining KR and not making any summountable money from catering in the ground.
ii) Having to find the cash to build the new stadium.
iii) Improving the contracts/salaries of players like Graham, Roby, Eastmond, Wilkin, Clough - something our fans easily forget/ignore.
b) We're choosing to capitalise on the excellent youth system we have developed and bring through large numbers of these academy products, which will/has, in the long term give/n us a better footing with regards to the club trained player rules which will mean that by the next round of franchise applications in 2011 we'll need to ensure that 8 members of our squad are home-grown, 12 are UK trained and only 5 are overseas trained. We may already have double the required home-grown players in our squad already and have the required only 5 overseas-trained players if you don't include Maurie (who's RL training was done here).
Whether the RFL/Superleague bosses review these rules come the next round of franchise applications is anybody's guess sadly.
