Whilst agreeing in principle with the ruling I would also have liked some of the tv money be ring fenced to ensure the return of U23 / reserve grade rugby. As I stated in the "Saints sign 2 beasts" topics Catalan should be in that structure.

Completely agree. The continued absence of an U23 competition is only harming player development.

To sign Graham we would have to buy him out of his current Canterbury contract. We would then have to stump up enough for his wages which are currently at £355k so it would require a lot of money for the club to find!

Scrapping the u23s is the biggest mistake rugby league has made in years. It's one of the first things Id bring back.

Wouldn't say no to a front 4 of Graham, Walmsley, Amor and Tasi!

Hopefully we'll see a return of u23 next year (I believe there are plans for an "optional" league) and further incentives for youth development (75k isn't alot compared to the cost of finding, training and making a "marquee")

Can,t see this ruling having a lot of impact, for me a marquee means just that and should be a creditable value of £200k and £300k respectively at least.

Before criticizing dropping the U23s, let's not forget we've never had it so good in terms of the volume and quality of young starlets.

Meanwhile, Aussie fans are genuinely beginning to question where the next superstar is coming from. Perhaps this is typical Aussie hysteria - but you'd be hard pushed to suggest this last year was a vintage. Lot of big stars coming to the ends of their careers. What's behind them doesn't fill you with the fear it once did.

We already beat them comfortably in the pack, IMO - with more kids coming through.

Now we're showing signs of competing in the centres and on the wings. The cat would [ureally [/ube among the pigeons if we could field someone classier in just one of four positions (centres, halves, loose).

I'm not suggesting this switch in fortunes is purely because of abandoning U23s. But I don't think you can discount it entirely.

After all, the whole argument went something like - [i"It'll improve the kids". [/i

Well, the kids have improved...

McManus is very passionate about the effect scrapping the u23s had on the game. What do plsyers who hit 20yr of age good now? They either get sent out on loan at lower league teams or cut loose.

Some players haven't develped yet at 19 and need more time. We could be losing a large player pool of 20yr old kids out the sport because they haven't physically grown yet.

As McManus said, for the sake of £40k a year it's disgusting.

Maybe it was too far going down to under 19s. Maybe a good compromise would have been to go to under 21s????

We, had U15's, U16's, U18's and U23's. There was nothing wrong with that system.

Agreed.

Wasn't this change to the youth teams only this year or last? I think the requirement to have a decent youth system in place to get a SL tick was a major part in the better development of youth.

The changes now will only impact in 5-10 years time really. Allowing clubs to scrimp on youth development is bad for the game as a whole.