Good to see Millward continuing Matterson's work with the juniors at Cas.

Decent effort last night, in bad conditions, with a team averaging less than 22 years of age, 6 of the starting 13 being 21 or under and 8 of the 17 coming through the Cas ranks.

Pity others continue to stack their sides with players from overseas. HKR had 9 in the starting 13 on Fri (how is that right) and our near neighbours heading in the same direction.

Huddersfield Giants:

Average Age 24

4 Debuts

6 Under-21

18 uk players in the 19

Wigan 16 - 20 Huddersfield

Injury crisis my backside.

Widnes are harvesting their youngsters from an i-farm outside Halton.

makes it even more impressive doesn't it

good to see danny nicklas getting a start today for hull fc, no doubt if agar was still head coach, he would've juggled the side around and had horne and westerman in the halves, looks like peter gentle is sticking to his word of playing players in their positions to cover injuries

Obsessed.



I don't feel particularly proud of our current ratio of imported players, but I remain hopeful that now we've got a bit more stability and a proper run at the recruitment market for next season, we'll see a shift away from our over-reliance on foreigners. We've got a decent crop of young players coming through, a couple of whom have recently signed longer term deals, so that feels like a promising start. Long way to go though, without a doubt.

True though.

In Agar's 4 seasons as head coach, just one youngster came though to become a regular in the 17 - Tom Briscoe. I could count on one hand the number of other youngsters that he even gave debut's o in this time.

Danny Nicklas is an example which shows what a difference a coach makes:

Danny spoke to the local media and said that he now trains in his actual position at half back, regularly swapping with Horne/Seymour. Last year, only Horne/Long trained as halfbacks, and Nicklas admitted that if calle dupon, he wouldn't have been ready.

Two seasons ago, Agar gave Danny a couple of games off the bench. He came on at centre for 10 minutes each time. Yesterday, Gentle gave him 80 minutes at half back against arguably the best team in the comp and he didn't look out of place.

That's the difference.

That's super. My question is this - now that you've got the best coach in the world at Hull, together with the bestest, most honestest owner and everything in the garden is as rosy as it can be - when will you stop banging on about Richard Agar?

8, not 9 players with Aussie accents. A pedantic point maybe, but I've seen it escalate on similar threads. More than once I saw 'what's that now, 13?' when it was actually 11 in the squad. I'm not asking for credit for that, just accuracy.




Definately and a very positive reflection on him getting ahead of Ellis.
Since Myler, the clutch of promising halfs to come out of the Championships (Briggs, Moore, McNally), haven't really cut it. Hopefully Ellis, that level's best player last year can reverse that trend.

Very grown up

I must have hit a nerve (although that wasn't the intention).

Surely you must understand that fans will make comparisons between their new coach and their old coach?