With the NRL looking at a draft system to distribute their young players more evenly, are we about to be left behind by them again? The NRL have been a forward thinking and progressive competition, growing their business and making tough decisions to move them forward. They have led the way in sports science, in a cap which allows marquee players and third party investment, and now a rookie draft moving towards the more successful American model, while we are still wedded and returning to, the 19th century European model. Our Salary cap has barely changed (in principle) for over a decade, we couldn’t even get agreement for a marquee allowance or the home-grown discount which was proposed months ago. When we ask ourselves why we don’t get billion dollar TV contracts, why we don’t have high participation, why we cannot compete on the field with the Australians, its because they say and do things like this [iDoyle also said that a salary cap review panel would be established to conduct an annual review of the salary cap. "Every year we will do a review of what is working, what is not working and what can be changed," Doyle said. "It will be looking both short term and long term. That panel will be put in place and they will be constantly looking at what is happening externally, what is happening in our own system and how we can continue to evolve that."[/i Read more: www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... z2wt7MKJAa And we don’t, We aim for stability at best, forgetting that stability isn’t growth, its stagnation. .

With the NRL looking at a draft system to distribute their young players more evenly, are we about to be left behind by them again? The NRL have been a forward thinking and progressive competition, growing their business and making tough decisions to move them forward. They have led the way in sports science, in a cap which allows marquee players and third party investment, and now a rookie draft moving towards the more successful American model, while we are still wedded and returning to, the 19th century European model. Our Salary cap has barely changed (in principle) for over a decade, we couldn’t even get agreement for a marquee allowance or the home-grown discount which was proposed months ago. When we ask ourselves why we don’t get billion dollar TV contracts, why we don’t have high participation, why we cannot compete on the field with the Australians, its because they say and do things like this [iDoyle also said that a salary cap review panel would be established to conduct an annual review of the salary cap. "Every year we will do a review of what is working, what is not working and what can be changed," Doyle said. "It will be looking both short term and long term. That panel will be put in place and they will be constantly looking at what is happening externally, what is happening in our own system and how we can continue to evolve that."[/i Read more: www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... z2wt7MKJAa And we don’t, We aim for stability at best, forgetting that stability isn’t growth, its stagnation. .

No no no.

A draft system does not work with P&R, it only works so well in the NFL because of their well established franchise system and College Football Leage.

A draft system also results in 'tanking' where teams with nothing to play for lose to get a better draft pick.

Lets stick to the best of British sport, excitement at both ends of the table.

It works in many other sports, not just the NFL, but I do agree it is incompatible with pretty much any form of P+R

it can, but there are ways and means of mitigating that.
We have tried that for a long time, and it is evidenced time and time and time again, people don’t want to watch a team which is struggling against relegation. There may be one or two fixtures that get a boost from it, however many many more attendances go down because of it.

I think this would be a good idea but not in the style of the NFL.

I think 3 draft rounds would be sufficient each year.

With the RFL allocating funds/or cap space to the developing club for each player selected say 100k round 1 75k round 2 and 50k round 3.

Plus the draft club buyout the remained of the players contract and must offer an improved one.

So the developing clubs benefit as well as the draft club.

Any player who has less than say 20 sl appearances can join the draft.

So this could include championship players as well as RU players.

would never happen because leeds/wigan/saints etc would never allow it...and why should they? they pay good money and have worked hard for decades to create those conveyor belts, good on em. Its up to the rest of us to try and emulate that

If that Valley Commando brings in a draft I'll have a word.

Who funds player development under a SL draft system?

To be independent it would have to be run and administered by the RFL, as we don't have an independent college system to develop players like the NFL do.

How do we manage those young players who are on the fringe of first team? They need some first team exposure but most weeks need a lower standard?

At what age would the draft happen?

How would it interact with amateur clubs?

I just don't think it would work here without totally scrapping everything bar SL and starting again. Even then we would still need a reserves comp or feeder clubs to properly develop players. And the funding wouldn't be provided at a decent enoug level.

As a London Broncos fan I can assure I am finding it really hard to contain my current levels of excitement

it would be needed to,be centrally funded, I actually think that would be a good thing and an opportunity to increase overall funding,

The draft would happen between 18 and 23, players would put themselves forward for it.

The feeder clubs would be the lower leagues and I'm not sure it would have all that much impact on the lower leagues

A draft only works in The USA because the franchises are not responsible for the production of youth talent. The draft takes players from the university system, who are mainly on sports scolarships. The systems are not in competition with each other. We cannot ask the likes of Wigan and Leeds to subsidise less prolific clubs. We may as well create a whole new level of rugby, taking responsibility for youth development away from the clubs totally.I am sure that several clubs would be in favour as they have have nothing to lose.

Personally, I'd argue that a "draft" would be worse for addressing our talent pool issues than the current system.

As things stand, we have the best clubs, with the best youth infrastructure, sweeping up the cream of the talent. At these clubs, the players get the best coaching, in the best facilities, and the best academic support (should they not reach their on-field potential). These clubs also have a good record on blooding that talent.

What a draft system is effectively proposing is to send the pick of the talent to inferior clubs, with inferior youth coaching, inferior facilities and inferior academic support. This, in turn, harms their career development. These clubs have also, historically, had poor records when it comes to exposing young talent to first team rugby.

Leeds, St Helens and Wigan don't have the best young players because the best young players only play for Stanningley, St Pats or Blackbrook; they have the best young players because the actively go out, find them, and train them in suitable facilities. Any SL club could do that if it had the inclination to do so.

As it stands, the better, proactive clubs get to keep the better players. Eventually, some of that talent trickles down to other clubs (so in effect, those clubs are investing in players for others to see the return); one of the successes, you could argue, of the salary cap.

I don't see how sending this year's BARLA player of the year to London Broncos is good for the player, the national team, or the Super League as a product.

You know what else is very popular?

In this very country?

Football.

And they don't have silly draft systems, they do have promotion and relegation, and they don't spend time wasting about making all clubs the same.

There is sense in such an standpoint, however I don’t think it addresses a draft in the way a draft would actually work.

The way I would see it working would be the RFL through a selection of numerous amateur clubs with access to better coaching and facilities funnelling the best talent to, at 17, the lower league clubs for 2 years. At 19 a player can declare himself available for the draft. If he isn’t drafted he returns to his lower league club and can declare himself available for any draft up until 24 when his contract can be bought out by any club at any time. In terms of a player needing more experience before SL he would continue to be affiliated to that club and available for them whenever he isn’t needed by the SL side.

I would agree that Leeds, Saints, Wigan et al, have the best youth systems because they have gone out and created them. I don’t agree that that means we as a game have the best system to maximise our talent.

Leeds, Saints and Wigan can only bring in so many players, they can only bring through so many players and they can only field so many players. In fact Leeds, Saints Wigan aren’t set up to or focussed on bring through 10-15 players every year because in the most part that would be useless to them. They want one or two coming through most years, 3 or 4 in some the rest are cast off and don’t have the time and effort invested in them. Are Leeds going to put the same time and effort in to The centre opposite Kallum Watkins as they did Kallumn?. The clubs who were best would still be rewarded but the job they would be doing would simply change to ‘polishing the diamond’ rather than digging it out

Its not about simply sending a young player to London, its about the huge change and improvement in youth development it would necessitate. The RFL would need to take control of youth development up until 17, personally I don’t think this is a bad thing, I don’t see a whole lot of benefit for pro clubs being involved at the very lowest level, and what benefit I do so could easily not only be repeated but expanded on by a national pathway.

For example, kids are probably pretty happy and find it pretty useful to have contact with the senior pro’s that’s a good thing, but we could not only have the RFL employ senior pro’s to work with these kids, we could more easily expose more kids to the skills and knowledge of the best. Clubs probably have maybe 6 young halves on their books at any one time? Its not cost effective to have Andrew Johns teach a master class to 6 kids. The 70 best in the country? It becomes a lot more realistic.

Another advantage of going through the national pathway than a club one is the prioritisation of the players development. The one and only consideration regarding that players development is that they become the best player they can be for their career, at a club, and this applies to all clubs, players are expected to fill in as and when needed, think of how much time Carl Ablett spent at centre as a young player when he is an out an out ball playing second rower. Ablett lost development time in his eventual position, not only in gaining skills and experience there but in the training and physical training he had to do to fill in there. Under a draft system Ablett would have trained to be a ball playing second rower, played lower league as a ball playing second rower, and come in to a team who needed a ball playing second rower.

Its about making sure the development of the player is prioritised, its about bringing each cohort through in a cogent way that gives more of them the best chance of a career in RL, its about helping them become the best player they can be and getting them playing where they are needed to be.

Its about changing the focus from Leeds having a successful youth academy for Leeds, to the game having a successful pathway for everyone.

So yes throwing a young player at London doesnt really achieve much, but having a pathway where more players achieve more of their potential will give us more better players to choose from, and more better players playing SL.

they also only exist thanks to a massive debt bubble reliant not only on high tv revenues but growing tv revenues. Football in this country is an absolute basket case and a success in spite of its set up, not because of it and it is being left behind in terms of profits and sustainability by many sports.

Its not a question of IF but WHEN it all comes crashing down.