Quote: Saddened! "It doesn't work in Super League like the NRL because the lower placed clubs aren't of the stature of those at the top. You would be mad to move from Leeds to Wakefield for example. Moving from state of the art facilities and 16,000 crowds every week to park facilities and 3,000 fans in a dilapidated stadium. Not only does it not work from higher place to lower placed, it's incredibly rare to see players still wanted by their clubs move between the top 4/5 clubs either.
That and the fact that Super League aren't monitoring or ensuring compliance with the salary cap. This WILL come out in autobiographies over the next 20 years, when players playing during the Super League era become distanced enough from the sport and from the possibility of having to pay money back. Gifts, jobs in third party companies for family members, housing improvements, payments after departure from the club from third party companies, all absolutely impossible to trace and the RFL aren't even attempting to. The dirty dealings of clubs like Wigan are out there in autobiographies already, Sean Long's for example mentions Wigan offering him brown paper bags stuff with cash. The fact a salary cap came in won't make this kind of off-the-books transaction more rare, it would make it even more useful to both club and player.'"
Have you not heard of Kyle Amor ?
He came from Leeds (albeit as a fringe player) to Wakefield and progressed very well at the small town club and was then signed by Saints (who even paid for his signature).
The big 4 will dominate the game for years to come as they are able to hoover up most of the quality youngsters.
Of course, they don't all start life at Wigan, Saints, Leeds etc, Amor being a great example.
Although he is thought of as a Leeds junior, he is of course Cumbrian, which is a fair walk from Leeds.
Wigan have their welsh "academy" to allow them to bring on more "home grown" juniors.
The service area's were supposed to allow club to reap the rewards of helping "local" juniors to advance into the pro game but, this system doesn't actually work as it was set out to do and of course, if any quality players do make it at the smaller clubs, cash speaks louder than words and it's not difficult for the big boys to dominate in this area.