Most amazing thing I read today

And we thought we were struggling to find quality players...

Well, good luck to him if he can get a deal.

Superb kicker, but didn't exactly stand out in our lower end of SL team at the time so it's hard to see just what Hudds are seeing that we didn't. That said sometimes a player is 'a fit' in one side and not another, so who knows? As I say, good luck to him.

To be fair to Huddersfield, they are desperately short of numbers. Grix & Brough injured at weekend, Wardle already missing, now Robinson has retired, and they were already fairly short.

Would be nice to see likes of Roger Simpson's lad stepping up and getting some game time out of it, but they clearly haven't poached enough young players from other teams....erm.... I mean they clearly haven't got confidence in their own academy lads to cover those spots, so need reinforcements. And you can only sign what's available.

That being said, you can't imagine someone as lazy as Foster would last long when everyone's fit. He's hardly going to take McGillvary or Murphy's spots on the wings when everyone's available.

Jared is also injured I believe.
They seem to have an obsession with our academy products though, as it looks like they are trying to secure a loan deal for Curtis Naughton from Hull.

Looking at Hudders is like Jim Bowen saying “have a look at what yer could’ve won” when you consider all our academy lads they’ve had in recent years (Kopczak, Wardle, Patrick, Simpson, Ferres etc).

Added to some if the others running round SL & NRL....

I can't really blame them for the likes of Ferres and Patrick. It was pretty much our choice to let those guys leave the club. Even Kopczak, to a certain extent (although those were pretty unique circumstances).

The ones that annoy me the most are Wardle, Simpson and Roberts. Guys who were on the cusp of becoming regular first team players before Huddersfield jump in and sign them up.
I suppose you can't exactly blame Huddersfield for simply doing what any other club could have, but in my opinion with the rules as they are now it's too difficult for clubs without benefactors to hold on to their academy talents.
And the compensation we receive any time an academy player leaves is borderline farcical.
The RFL need to try and get all clubs to work on developing their own junior players. Right now it's too easy to let someone else do all the hard work and then jump in and reap the rewards.

Spot on. And I agree, you can't really blame teams like Huddersfield who have a nice wealthy backer for doing this. Wire did it for a while too, although they seem to have then sorted out their own decent academy system.

The biggest problem with doing it, is that while it's all fine and dandy for the club raiding talent, it discourages the smaller clubs from bothering.
If you're going to get the most of out of your young talent (Leeds, Wigan), the incentive is there to nurture them. If another club is going to get all the benefit, then why bother? Which leads to clubs like Bradford (as they are now at least) questioning whether it's worth running a decent academy set up, which then impacts the long term options for up and coming kids.

Having spoken to John Bastian on many occasions I know the importance of having a decent quality U16s and U19s setup.

He was part of the setup at Leeds that has got them where they are now and did the same at Warrington. What he doesn’t know about youth development isn’t worth knowing.

He says the key for a successful first team is to keep adding layers of homegrown players who have come through the system. They identify with the club and usually always are more committed and give that extra 1% than a player that is bought in.

He’s said that having and keeping the likes of Addy, Mellor, Olbison, O’Brien etc is key to keeping the younger lads coming through as they see something to aspire to and can identify with those lads. A team that is bought lacks an identity and will fall short when that extra 1% is needed.

Luckily the club have bought into John’s ethos when it could be easier to just use all that money and buy some players. In the long run that long term vision will pay off.

In the meantime we remain vulnerable to raids from clubs waving chequebooks but perhaps not as vulnerable as when we were flirting with administration between 2011-14. I daresay we’d hang onto the likes of Jared Simpson and Ollie Roberts nowadays.

We have some excellent U16s and some of last year’s U16s that have moved up to the U19s are very promising too

Having coached 3 of the lads who have stepped up to the u19s this year from West Bowling, looking at how the Bulls are doing youth development, it's very positive going forwards and we will certainly feel the benefit of a strong youth development sooner rather than later

I know John Bastian is super keen on getting closer to Bradford amateur clubs than the club has previously. That’s got to be a good thing as local amateur clubs have been a bit neglected in the past by the Bulls apparently.

To be fair, there seems to have been a lot of off-field neglect in many areas from the club for the last few years. All of which seems to have in it's own way contributed to our current standing

The single most refreshing news to cone out for a while.....is that we are focusing on youth and having young players ingrained into the club that want to play for club.

I'll watch this club until the day I die in whatever division as long as there's players who pull on that shirt and give 100%.

Some of our current older pro's could learn a thing or two about commitment and effort from the young lads.

Despite sterling efforts from Paul Medley and Richard Tunningley, the youth structure was neglected by previous regimes. We lost promising players and found it increasingly difficult to attract youngsters to the club. Remember the reports that the club was considering vacating Tong. There was a lot of short term crisis thinking.

The appointment of John Bastian was a statement of intent that developing our own players was a key part of the new management's long term plan. I understand that Jimmy Lowes was very much involved in firstly identifying this need and secondly in the recruitment of Bastian. As Bullseye has said, our head of youth had a superb track record at Leeds and Wire. Thie club reinforced their determination by building a strong group of coaches and staff( eg. Matt Diskin and Leigh Beattie) in the youth set up.

Speaking personally this development was the key issue in persuading me that Marc Green was serious when he said he was " in it for the long haul".

Our youngsters still compete against Super Leagus clubs, we have much stronger links with local community clubs and the youth structure is rated by the RFL as better than many SL clubs . We are now finding recruitment of youngsters much easier than a few years ago.

We can help the club by going along to watch our U16's and U19's - and of course diehard fans could always become members of BullBuilder and help to provide those important extras that might just make the difference in recruitment and retention.