Quote: Judder Man "Very much so, you don't need to rely on "money for success" its more what you can achieve and promote at Academy level and as you say what superleague see from the championship clubs. For the saints half the team are from the academy and didn't spend a lot of money getting Walmsley from Dewsbury and Batchelor from York those 2 are now international players.
Stabilty in players and coach are another important factor, quite a few clubs have a large turnaround of players, you could say the current top 4 clubs at the moments are not doing a lot of chopping and changing.
At the moment Wigan and Saints are the benchmark they are not jumping on the money merry go round we just don't have a salary cap to make that work.'"
It’s very hard to prove a causative effect but it is noticeable that the end of Bradford’s successful era coincided with the money running out, and they’ve continued to struggle while poor despite having a pretty productive academy. The couple of times poor relation teams (Cas and Salford) have made a run to the GF it wasn’t based on academy products. Salford didn’t have one and afaik it still isn’t confirmed whether Cas will be allowed to keep theirs in its current form, because it was so unproductive at that time. They got their short-term stuff sorted out and that is the best that can be hoped for without sustained and substantial spending. There just aren’t any counter examples in the SL era.
Incumbency as a top team, and the associated stability/continuity are fair points. I’d say that is second most important after money.
