Leeds, Wigan and St Helens do a good job running academies and producing super league players. Why should the RFL take over running these? Teams like Salford and Leigh just need to step up to the plate and put some time, money and effort into producing players.

There is already a midlands academy and a north east academy run by the RFL, which is a good thing as those areas don't have a super league team, however there should be no need for the RFL to run them where super league clubs exist.

Agreed. Reducing the amount of Academies won't strengthen the game, how will reducing the amount of opportunities for young players be good for the game? It's like the preposterous idea of a 10 team league.

They do seem to be going the way of Regional Academies. In the U19's league, there was a Cumbria Regional side last season, obviously the City of Hull Academy, I believe there's one set up in the Midlands, one in the North-East (run by Newcastle?). London are also still running one, and Bradford also in the Championship.

The rest of SL have their own, barring Salford now and Leigh, so maybe as someone suggested they can collaborate and get one set up.

It would be pointless for those clubs that are good at running an academy to give up, so maybe the answer is that those who aren't good at it hand over to a RFL regional academy. Those that go with an RFL regional academy see their academy funding diverted into that. A draft system is then put in place for those participating in that system. It's important that lower league sides are covered too, because that will give them a stake in the system and will allow money to pass down from SL by selling their picks e.g. Rochdale Hornets would get the first pick from a "Manchester Academy", the other clubs in the "Manchester Academy" could buy that pick off them, or if nobody within the "Manchester Academy" wants to buy then it gets opened up to clubs outside e.g. Saints or Leeds could come in and buy the pick. It would act as a transfer from the richest clubs in the system to the smaller clubs in the system whilst stopping bigger outside clubs muscling in. This process would be written into the contracts of any young player entering a regional academy.

But won't you end up with lads getting signed to clubs they don't want to play for? What happens when the next big Cumbrian talent comes through? As it stands he can get scouted and signed by Wigan or whoever, under your system he presumably gets drafted to play part time in League One at Barrow/Whitehaven/Workington. From there he may give up on RL and get a normal job (I know for a fact young players at part time clubs are on buttons), or otherwise never reach his potential compared to if he had signed for an SL club. OK you can say 'well the SL team will just buy him/the pick' but that only works when the League One team wants to sell. They might want to keep their big talent regardless of whether it is in his best interests to play for them. Meanwhile a lower quality player gets the same position at the SL club purely because he is local.

I know what you are saying but, Lads can only ever go to a club that want's to pay for their services, regardless of which academy they are playing at.
The one thing for sure is that the fewer academies that we have, the easier it becomes for everyone to see who the standout players are, at which point, inevitably, it will come down to pound notes and which clubs have the deepest pockets.

Yes but that system stops clubs picking up the lads they want to sign. I honestly think Cumbrian lads in particular would be shafted by that system given that it's all League One or below there now. Also, will the big SL clubs go scouting further afield if they are going to have trouble signing any gems they unearth? May as well not bother and never find the next Lee Mossop. I don't see why they don't make it a prerequisite to run an academy. Even the National Conference League, which is totally amateur, requires teams to have enough players to field an A team in their regional league (I think). If they can manage it on a shoestring, and teams like Bradford can manage an academy from the Championship, I'm sure we can make it an SL pre-requisite to run an academy (one year's exemption for newly promoted teams, fair enough).

Some interesting points but in my opinion every super league club should be running an academy has a bare minimum,I'm not sure regional academies would work within the heartlands. Let's not forget some of these lads have just left school and are playing rugby alongside doing a college course. Has a parent of an u19s player it would be very difficult to travel any distance to a regional academy and continue studies not to mention the cost of running about,after all these lads although paid they arnt earning a super league salary more getting a few quid in there pocket whilst doing something they love.

Not sure how the hull acadamy runs but people from the hull area I know are very negative towards how it's worked,some lads from last years kids just simply walked away whilst 2 of the better 16s left to join West Yorkshire clubs before staying with the hull franchise.

' Just need to step up to the plate and put some time , money and effort '

Seriously ?

Let me guess , you're a Leeds fan

If you want to sit at the big boys table you have to put on your big boy pants because your excuses just don't cut it.

Well when the ' Big ' boys turn up we'll have to leave the table , till then you'll just have to put up with us

Wontcha

Once again people are trying to have a reasoned discussion , then Smokey turns up all aggressive and childish all in one

the big boys are already there, thats why you are wanting to be judged to a lower standard.

Presented without comment.

Yes it certainly needs time and effort. At Wakefield our academy has usually been somewhere between poor and decent and it would have been easy for us to decide to scrap it altogether and spend the money elsewhere, especially as we can't even spend the salary cap as it is. But we actually put time and effort into improving our academy and it's starting to bear fruit, with us having the current SL young player of the year in Tom Johnstone and the Albert Goldthorpe rookie of the year in Max Jowitt plus a few others starting to come through who we have very high hopes for. We've still got a good way to go but the desire is there from everyone at the club to turn our academy into a consistently successful one and everyone is aware it won't happen overnight.

So if we can do it, the poorest club in Super League, then the likes of Salford should easily be able to better anything we do if they put in the same amount of effort considering the much larger funds they have access to. But the likes of Marwan just want a quick fix and thinks "Wahhh, I've been funding our academy for a few years now and we're still not as good as Wigan or Leeds. What's the point, lets just scrap it."

It's embarrassing to read some posters trying to justify their teams not running an academy when the reality is that they're just lazy short termists who would rather let other teams do the work for them so that they can sign another 30 year old Australian.