So on past record you've a 50-50 chance of completely wasting your cash, a 25% chance of getting a decent player who can't perform fully because the rest of the team is so weak due to you having spent all your salary cap on that one player, and a 25% chance of a guy who's influential when he's not crocked, and is getting crocked more often these days because he's getting on a bit. Nice business.

I didn't say Bradford were solely responsible for England's lack of competitiveness, but like all teams they have one in 13 of the places available for England-qualified players.

Nor do I condemn all overseas signings. A class signing of a young player who's at the top of his game is never a bad thing because it increases the quality and intensity of the competition. But do any of us really think Orford is going to be playing at the top of his game when he's 34 ? Yet he'll still be earning £250k per year which could be being spent on producing/retaining those young English players who you argue don't currently exist.

Identifying and developing really talented youth costs money and involves taking risks. Saying "they're not there now, so we have to spend our cash on a retiring Aussie" thus becomes a vicious circle.

DEFINATELY not.
Biggest load of printed codswallop ever that one.
I doubt Buderus is too, not sure about the other two though

31 years old, wanted to finish his career in England ( I bet he did) but is 2 years earlier than expected!!!!!

The money being spent on this guy is a TOTAL waste IMO.

£840,000 will buy oh so many balls, kits, showers etc., etc that could be used to help kids into the game and develop their skills and talents.

Multiply that by the other overseas players who "may" be on similar amounts and all this money is lost to the game.

Are a few of us the only ones who can see the problem here?

Was Saturday the pinnacle of RL in this country?

If it is, then this signing is great for the Bulls, and we condemn international competition into the dustbin for with this kind of thinking there is NO CHANCE we will ever beat the Aussies in a meaningful scenario for well ...................................

The game is slowly drifting away people and from where I look is at the edge of a sadly terminal decline in this country.

If we have to rely on past it, crocked, holidaying pension seeking oceanics can you really argue any different.

The watershed was 1978 when the Aussies went back home and DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

1982 should have done the same in this country but it didn't. The game is STILL played in the same old fashion in the same old stadia with the same old ideas and the same old development strategy.

What the future hold , is open to debate but all this kind of signing does is reinforce the idea that shorttermism is the way the clubs are always going to go and as they control the RFL, then the way the whole game is going to go.

Is there hope?

But again, you're laying the blame at the feet of SL clubs. I'm all for youth development and I'd love us to be able to compete on the international stage. However, you've failed to ask the question that all SL clubs will ask regarding the England/international team: "What's in it for us?"

Until there's some kind of reward for bringing on young english talent then why SHOULD SL clubs be expect to foot the bill? It's down to the RFL to make youth development an attractive proposition for clubs. I'd expect that all 14 SL clubs couldn't really give 2 figs about the international team and tbh fair to them, why should they? Internationals do nothing for clubs other than disrupt pre-season training and threaten injury to star players

Good signing IMO

Orford is a very good scrum halve with plenty of pace and a v. good kicking game.

Bradford havnt had a decent halfback for years so the Bulls should be delighted.

They just need a decent stand off and they may be a threat next season.

Deacon to S Wales to join up with Noble - you heard it here 1st!

Indeed, and I would suspect the same would also apply to clubs outside SL.

Businesses are in it for themselves, and sporting clubs are businesses.

And businesses who can't see past the end of their noses deserve to go to the wall. If SL clubs adopt this attitude of "what's in it for us", then perhaps they don't deserve to survive.

International competition is what brings in the big money. The reason GP clubs have salary caps so much higher than SL clubs despite similar crowds is because they get far more cash from their centrall allocation. The reason they get more central cashh is that RU has a thriving international game which brings in huge sponsorship and TV deals. You'd have to be really stupid to see this, and I don't believe that most of our SL clubs really are that stupid.

We've reached saturation point in terms of our domestic income-generating capacity in this country. Crowds have grown steadily but slowly since SL began, but are levelling off overall, and certainly aren't going to jump to the sort of size we'd need to generate the cash needed to fight off a cash-rich RU. So most significant income growth in future is going to have to come from TV and sponsorship. TV and sponsorship are directly related to international competition. Therefore, we have to improve the attractiveness of our international competition to improve our income. That's, as you say, a very businesslike notion.

Really, if any SL chief exec was so stupid as to suggest that international competition has no relevance to them, then that's as good a reason as any to make that chief execitive's sacking a condition of license renewal.

Even if we had an England team that could compete on equal terms with the Aussies, there'd still only be three international teams remotely capable of winning anything. This isn't likely to generate the kind of money you speak of.

if you honestly think that any of the above are on £280k a year you are deluded.

I am privvy to the wages of wigan, given that I have worked on their annual statutory audit and without giving you how much they earn/earned, I can tell you that neither Barrett nor Subway Stu where anywhere near that figure. Not even close.

I dont for one minute believe that that King or Burderus on that either.

He's going to be 32 when SL '10 kicks off and 35 when his contract runs out. He will be the best paid player and he is an old man! Tell me again why SL isn't as intense as the NRL?

That is true. But then, that's like saying that I can't get a candle as bright as the other guy's candle right now, so instead I'll stumble around in the dark.

RL has traditionally been a short-termist game. On the one hand, that's a strength, because it means that we're much more willing to innovate and change things quickly in search of the extra buck. Without that short-termism, we'd probably never have dropped the flankers. However, our long-term view is woeful. We were the first with a rugby world cup concept, but never followed it through. We began deveopment programmes in Russia, Italy and the Balkans which began to produce real fruit, then dropped them, allowing the RU to move in. In 1995 we were offered a golden egg-laying goose, but chose to kill it to maximise immediate benefit. For the first 10 years of SL we resisted the long-term planning mechanism of franchises/licenses in favour of short-termist P&R.

While the establishment factor plays a significant role in the greater success of RU, for me the most significant reason has always been that RU is strongly controlled by their central governing bodies. Those governing bodies take decisions in the interests of their game as a whole, as they see it, and by definition that is long-termist. In RL, clubs have always dominated, and that's why our decisions tend to be short-term and transient. Richard Lewis, and Neil Tunnicliffe before him, saw this and tried to change it. Tunnicliffe failed, but Lewis has at least partially succeeded. That's why, whatever his balls-ups, I think he's been the most effective RL Chief Exec/Chairman our game has had. My concern is that I don't see an obvious successor, and I fear that Nigel Wright, who is being prepared for the role, is back to the dark days of "never mind Europe, we have to look after Batley" (no offence, Batley).

While I'm at it, Bradford's accounts up to 2008 were recently mailed to shareholders. I wonder if one of them might be able to put on here how much the Bulls were spending each year on youth development. Then we can compare it to Orford's salary.

I see your point, but from a club perspective, their primary consideration is whether they get to stay in SL and then whether they are capable of winning anything.

Every SL club will spend its full salary cap (or as near as damn it) on players' wages. If Bradford, for example, decided to not sign Orford and instead put his salary into youth development, they'd be left so far behind all the other SL clubs in the short term, and might not even be in SL by the time their investment in youth began to bear fruit.

The only way it would work is if every club was forced to spend a specific amount of their income on youth development. This may mean that salary caps need to be reduced to free up the cash.

Bradford's problems, at a time when the prevailing winds of news is generally bad and season tickets are going on sale.

Exactly! The SL grant should have to have a certan amount of it spent on Jnr development. If it means teams can't sign some over the hill Aussies on 200k contracts then so be it!