Not by me. I've been consistently in favour of developing our young players rather than bring in antipodean journeymen or resigning elderly has-beens. Obviously a balance has to be struck between youth and experience but I think letting go of young backline players is foolish of Saints especially when one of them hasn't even had the chance to show what he has at first grade level and yet is playing in a position we are crying out for talent to fill.

I do hope the club isn't going backwards and that Royce will be strong enough to drop our elderly has beens in favour of a conscious policy of providing an opportunity to our potential talent in the backline. We sure do need it.

How much U21 rugby do you watch to make that kind of comment? If you've seen a lot of him fair enough, but if you haven't, why do you think he should get that chance?

Did he show enough to be given that first team opportunity? Perhaps his games in the U21s showed enough weaknesses to not be considered for the next level up. He's certainly not a name that has been put forward by people I know to be regular U21 watchers as a potentially great player. And whilst some players develop at later ages, we've not made many, if any, mistakes in which young players we have released in the last 10 or so years.

Over a period of time like 10 years it's difficult to quantify the players as some have been replaced and then the replacements have been replaced or not in some cases.

e.g Iro -> Gleeson (Many would have said this was a major step down at the time) -> Lyon -> Gidley -> Shenton

on the other hand have we every replaced Scully? Long and it took over a year to replace Talau with a second row (wearing the number 4 shirt)

As I said, Armstrong, Foster, Wheeler are all guys that can play centre and have had first team chances, plus Makinson is highly rated. We also have Lomax and Gaskell who will fill in for other positions in the backs.

We can't keep them all, and if its the best thing for Bradbury to move on, then the club shouldn't stand in the way if he's not in their plans. If we started tying down youngsters and then not releasing them even if we didn't need them, there'd be a lot more discontent in the camp i'm sure.

Agreed.

We've a number of young players who possibly have 10 years ahead of them in the game that have shown that they will go on to become, at the very least, competent SL standard players. Younger kids are going to have to show something extra to displace them in the squad.

Exactly, whether Bradbury ends up in SL or just has a decent career for oldham, it shows young lads at Saints that even if they don't make the SL grade for saints, its not the end of their career. If saints look after them and help find them a club that suit their level, then it will a) give the youngsters the confidence that the club will do the best by them, thus keeping player morale high and b)forge relationships with NL clubs that could come in handy if they have any young stars who should make the step up to SL.

I am an Oldham supporter just checking out this thread about one of our new additions 'coming home'. By the wat if you would like to send Kyle back to his home town I am sure we would try to squeeze him in somewhere...!

But seriously, I am sure that if the young lad is good enough you would hope that he would a slot somewhere in a SL squad ahead of an overseas journey man assuming he shows his potential in the National leagues.

The mere fact that somebody so ordinary as Meli is retained in one of our top SL sides is surely enough of a condemnation of the state of our game. he should get anywhere near first grade with his lack of pace and inability to catch a kick but he does and he will next yr.

Anybody surprized that we are not on the 4 Nations final?

Meli has experience, any team that tries to replace experience with youth too quickly comes a cropper and we've lost a lot of experience over the last 2 or 3 years. Bradbury isn't in competition with him, he's in competition with the likes of Lomax, Foster and Armstrong.



No, considering the youth development outside of pretty much Saints, Wigan and Leeds has been pretty woeful over the last ten years.

What are the rehabilitation facilities like in Oldham? World class?