Bourneville played his rugby in France, IIRC. He was one of those guys - like Ricky "Meninga" Cowan - who we reckoned McClennan owed some favours to from his days working on the docks.

A few guys I worked with knew him through the club. They described him as something akin to the Nigel Farage of New Zealand RL. Only with muscles. And a bad attitude.

I think the real problem is clubs no longer having A teams.

With so many players that look like they could make the step up and only 17 first team places available each week, it is hard to all of them getting a fair chance.

But surely it's the responsibility of championship/ championship 1 clubs to be feeding off the players who can't get a chance - whether that's through DR or thorough scouting and signing on if a player is let go?

This is not a lot of use to Saints, letting players go out into the wilderness to fend for themselves. Even if they are loaned rather than let go, they learn bad habits. Scott Moore at Castleford is a good example, after he came back with behaviour issues we gave up loaning to SL clubs completely.

So now we have pretty much taken over Rochdale, as Leeds have done with Hunslet, to guarantee the environment and quality of coaching is correct. But the problem with that is we are turning Rochdale into an A team/feeder team. Far better to just have an A team in the championship and leave these smaller clubs alone.

Different players mature at different times, Leeds giving up Kyle Amor and us letting Andy Yates go are results of us and Leeds not having a method of developing players long term.

Quote: Rogues Gallery "It's a crying shame that the young French players are having to come here. At the Wigan v Catalan academy friendly game at Orrell I was speaking to Laurent Frayssinous. He told me Catalan could not be admitted into the U19 academy competition because the majority of the Superleague clubs were not prepared to travel to France at that level, so most of the young French players were playing in the lower leagues and that their season ended in early May. IMO when the clubs got the extra tv funding some of that money should have been ring fenced to MAKE the teams travel. Catalan were prepared to travel over here. As far as I'm aware only Leeds and Wigan have played in France, but I think Saints, Wigan and Leeds have hosted Catalan over here. How are those young French players expected to develop if they are not playing regular academy RL? Rant over.'" Ahem www.totalrl.com/catalans-given-p ... -u19-team/? Davy mentioned there was "tactical voting" involved with the marquee rule, maybe this was part of it ...

Quote: Rogues Gallery "It's a crying shame that the young French players are having to come here. At the Wigan v Catalan academy friendly game at Orrell I was speaking to Laurent Frayssinous. He told me Catalan could not be admitted into the U19 academy competition because the majority of the Superleague clubs were not prepared to travel to France at that level, so most of the young French players were playing in the lower leagues and that their season ended in early May. IMO when the clubs got the extra tv funding some of that money should have been ring fenced to MAKE the teams travel. Catalan were prepared to travel over here. As far as I'm aware only Leeds and Wigan have played in France, but I think Saints, Wigan and Leeds have hosted Catalan over here. How are those young French players expected to develop if they are not playing regular academy RL? Rant over.'" Ahem www.totalrl.com/catalans-given-p ... -u19-team/? Davy mentioned there was "tactical voting" involved with the marquee rule, maybe this was part of it ...

Its not quite that simple, though. Mainly due to the lack of money in RL.
Playing for Saints is a potential full time career for a young lad. Once that's gone, if he looks for a level 2 club and the only one who wants him is miles from home and only going to pay him washers, he's not going to up sticks and move, is he? More likely he's going to go and play with his mates at Thatto Heath or somewhere similar and get a normal job.

LOL. According to the Saints website, Nzoungou is a sprightly FORTY FIVE years old.