Hansen is 24 and originally played for Folly Lane Swinton.

Surely this would undermine the effectiveness of the cap, the aim of which was to prevent clubs from spending more than they could afford on player wages.

I'd agree that there should be some incentive for clubs to develop their own players though.

Rogues is the messiah.

Seriously...great idea. You only have to look at the recent comments in the press that the Aussies are now touting our kids after the recent successes of Flanagan, Ellis and Morley. We need to do more to keep hold of our talents and produce more of them.

Look at Cas, if rumours are to be believed they will lose Westerman, Shenton and Owen to bigger offers from other clubs. Surely there should be some way of rewarding Cas for developing those players.

Maybe we should another view and increase their cap value by say 20% if they move on to another Superleague club, so if a player from Cas (as an example) moves to Wigan (as an example) and is paid £100K per annum his cap value is £120K
Is that an option?

Look at Oldham and see how many players there are from that area. How good could they be if the incentive was there for that team

I'm very passionate about my Rugby and want to see us bloody beat those Aussies before I'm lying face up in a coffin in St. Marys churchyard Birchley.

Saints Academy setup is just fantastic and I hope we can emulate it. As a neutral watching your game v Leeds, you wouldnt have thought the likes of Foster (Forster?), Wheeler, Dixon et al were at the early stages of their careers. All your youngsters seem to just blend in with the first team and do a job.

Is it not time then to applaud Mick Potter? He had an excellent reputaion at Catalan for developing young players and could this be one of the main reasons the board seemed so keen to get him. A significant number of the players mentioned have been introduced into SL by MP and every credit to him.

No, Potter is boring, the players hate him, he is tactically inept, he deliberately injures our players, he let the wrong players leave in the off-season and signed the wrong replacements and the fact that Catalans have blossomed since he left is proof that he is a pudding and should have been sacked after 80 minutes of the season.

The thing is, he had no choice. They were introduced last season when we had our injury crisis. There was simply no-one else to bring in. I'd praise Potter for his youth development if he had brought them in with most of our team already fully fit and ok to play. The only choice Potter would have had would have been which player to choose to cover which position affected by injury. He chose Armstrong at first to cover for Meli but Armstrong disappeared and was replaced by Wheeler and Lomax. But their development to that level was nothing to do with Potter. They had simply been developed to a point where they were capable of having first grade experience. Potter then had to decide whether they were capable of continuing that experience or whether someone else should have a go. So far as our youth development is concerned, praise goes elsewhere for mine.

Quel suprise

yes but compare that to millward, who went out and signed players like des clark and leon felton when we had a few injuries

I played against Hansen at Under 19's level when he was 16, and you could tell then that he was going to make it, was the best player on the pitch by some distance.

Oh, I'm not saying any previous coaches were any better, just that Potter isn't any different. I doubt very much we would have seen the number of young players in our team had we not had so many injuries last season and had the Chief not decided to go without recruiting over the last two seasons.

Well, if the young lads who are promoted to the first team squad train with the first team squad then yes. But they have already been very well developed by that time. What Potter is doing is creaming off the best and he will (or can - I don't know the policy) play those players only when we have injuries because they are our backup.

Meli will swan back into his place this coming weekend and would do so even if Foster had been the best defender, ball leaper, tackler and attacker in the land. And should we end up in the Grand Final again, Meli will be there again to help us lose again regardless of how great Foster might become in the meantime!