Leigh shouldn't get benefit of the doubt, nor should any top flight club get let off with not running an academy.

You should have your salary cap reduced if you don't run an academy team and are in SL. That would stop clubs adopting a short term approach and using the saving to spend on the first team potentially giving some of the lesser teams an advantage over other lesser teams.

Wakey don't spend to the cap but run an Academy. The shortfall in funding that the club has to make up could be used on improving the first team but it would rightly be wrong for us to contemplate doing so.

All clubs should be required to run an academy and A team IMO. How do Salford plan to get the minimum number of club trained players required in their squad in a few years time?

I don't support this move whatsoever, but from a business point of view you can understand it.

Would you rather spend the money on developing players/employing more staff/needing bigger or more facilities. Or would you rather pick up the players that Wigan, Warrington, St Helens and Leeds cannot afford to keep. We have a salary cap that encourages this sort of behaviour.

You could play this team without having any out lay, just picking up the players teams couldn't afford to keep.

1. Matty Russell
2. Stef Marsh
3. Iain Thornley
4. Jake Connor
5. Tom Lineham
6. Ryan Hampshire
7. Gareth O'Brien
8. Lee Mossop
9. Brad Dwyer
10. Dom Crosby
11. Jack Hughes
12. Greg Burke
13. Logan Tomkins

A lot of that team moved on because the team play played for either needed to free up money on the SC or couldn't pay them as much as someone else could. Very few moved for footballing reasons.

So as a business decision, why the hell would you invest in an academy, when you can get these sorts of players because their parent team cannot afford to keep them. The model we have is stupid.

Rules should be in place that prohibit such a negative approach.

You did, in reply to a post I made about the Salary Cap, where he laid down everything we get from Sky.

I thought that was it, having looked again, he said similar on Twitter recently too. He did say that Wakey's academy is run on a shoestring but if it can produce players like Johnstone then it must have up a bloody good pair of shoes!!

"B*****x
The clubs run the RFL so which cheapskates are to blame?
Overseas crock on a 4 year contract anyone?

Not really sure why anyone would follow a sport that makes you so unhappy.
Try kabaddi! Thats mental!!

can you define 'footballing reasons' for me?

I'd make it more simple than that on review. I would say 'without the consent of the coach'. Maybe Lineham & Connor didn't move with the consent of the coach, the rest the coach was happy to let go. Dwyer falls into both sides of this argument, as I assume when he was let go first time, the coach was happy, but I assume this time the coach would like to keep him.
I always find it stupid that a coach is having to make decisions based on finance when his team has no financial issues. Thats whats happening with most of these players. Prime example was Crosby, in which the statement read something along the lines of 'we wanted to keep him, warrington will pay him more, Bretherton and Navarette is a more cost effective solution than paying Crosby what he deserves'.

Isn't the additional £100k funding per club is earmarked for the clubs' Foundations for work in the community, rather than for an academy?

I'm relatively at ease with the Hull situation. Within a relatively smallish area it makes some sense to pool resources. The big issue would obviously come with deciding which team the players go to that make it through the system.

The Salford situation is a crime really. We can all make noises about how football comes first in this area but with that attitude the situation will never be improved.

thats the dilema! atm fc have a group of players ring fenced in the CoH academy, but in a couple of years it will be like a draft pick apparently, so if kr dont come back up straight away it could get interesting!

At the same time what's the point of Wigan and Leeds stockpiling 50 players ??? You have to let them go sooner or later.