It was 25 man squads as deemed by the RFL to be a clubs First Team Squad. I did include Whatuira, which simply a judgement call as to who to include and who not. Drew, mentor or not, is an overseas player in Huddersfield's first team squad, as are Fa'alogo and Lolesi.

As for your other young players, thats why I restricted it to a first team squad of 25, otherwise its simply a case of which team has a bigger academy. Which means sod all. Josh Griffin was signed from Wakey, Keal Carlile was signed from Bradford and I didn't include them or McGilvary, Hodgson, Walker, Fairbank or Brown in the 25 man squad due to more senior players above them.

Andy Raleigh, I thought, started out at Sheffield however if I'm wrong about that I'll happily change it.

It is slightly (and no more than that) worrying in my view that Hudds only have 3 (or 4) academy products in their team, however I don't know enough about Hudds academy system now to judge what potential it has for the future. Same goes for Hull KR by the way.

we weren't a top side either we were in our 4th season back in the top flight and we saw a good young English prospect, which is what rovers are guilty of not doing in their 4th season.

We've got some good young english prospects given full time contracts in this our 4th season in SL. So lets see how we are the end of the season shall we?

The work being done by Martin Dunn at Rovers with the academy is excellent.

fair enough,i wasn't trying to make out you were being naughty
we have some good prospects in the academy set up who will only improve with brad drew as their coach, we beat hull in the eliminator last week 33-14 and now play wigan. hopefully we will see some of these lads coming through next year as mcgilvary has done this year, 7 tries in 5 games.

good stuff,hopefully some of these lads will start to come through next year if given chance?

Hopefully mate.

Its not an overnight solution, stuff like this needs time, its only fair to judge in a couple more years time.

you dont have to run with a squad of 3 players over 3 seasons, just if you had brought in three players like that, you could have run with 3 fewer overseas players


Im sure Hudds were fairly sure of his existence prior to him playing for you considering he had already played for their academy He had also played for Sheffield and was 24 and had been in the nl2 dream team for 2 years before spending 1 year with hull kr

we are into the play-offs, which players are you expecting to bring through in the play-offs?

where are the prospects you signed 4 years ago? where are the projects?

if the academy work is so good, why do you need 10 overseas players next season?

it does take time to get an academy up to scratch, but 4 years for 1 player?

and if your academy isnt yet up to scratch, why arent you looking at players in the national leagues or on the fringes of other SL squads rather than Overseas players?

In the last 2/3 seasons we have signed or promoted several English Players including 2 who are now internationals since their move, we have given a young Saints Fullback (Hardman) and a Young Wigan winger/centre oppertunities in the Top Flight in which they would probably never of had at their respective clubs.
Do you think Scott Murrell would now be a full time SL Player with Leeds if we had not snapped him up and i never saw Cas coming in for Cockayne who is a home town lad to give him his chance, love him or hate him he is a fantastic SL Utility player for us.
Its not quite as straight forward as you all think but hey your entitled to your oppinion.

To be fair to Hull Kingston Australians...they are faced with a chicken v the egg scenario. With a bigger, better supported, financially stronger and more recently successful club on their doorstep, the need to be competative on the pitch if they are to ever catch up...and therefore they will employ whomever the RFL will let them.
It is the ultimate case of trying to keep up with the jonses

Gaela and Webster are really good, not as good as Dobson though. Newton, Vella and Clinton are not all that. Mason is not yours yet, hope he does do well though I fear he'll take early retirement. I'm surprised dobson hasn't decided to head back to the NRL, maybe he realises he's in a better comp in SL?

To what end? So that we could also do Harlequins sack cloth and ashes routine of "we're but look how many English players we've got?

Signing English players would not have improved Rovers' academy at all, simply weakened the first team with the likely result that they would not now be in SL or they would not have finished in the playoffs for the last two years and then I expect you would be the first one to complain of on field mediocrity and not contributing to the competition.

I think that Rovers board and coach have a bit better idea than you Smokey and am very happy with the way they are running the club. I just think it galls you that the club you love to hate is doing so well.