More foreigners than Englishmen in the 17

Quote: Barnacle Bill "If Hull KR today signed all the best 15/16 year old RL prospects in the country it would still be 3 or 4 years (longer for significant numbers) before we saw those prospects filtering through to the first team. This is the problem with your argument Smokey. You insist Rover's youth development isn't good enough, you don't know what they are doing now. '"

youth development isnt the only option. This is the fundemental point. When you need to choose between your youngsters, or a player from the lower leagues or a fringe player at another club you are going to do one of two things, make sure your youngsters are the best or invest a lot more time and effort trying to polish a rough diamond. That isnt happening when the first option to fill a gap in the squad is Australia. If Hull KR couldnt bring in Blake Green they would still have needed to find a player from somewhere, either putting more effort into getting a top class youngster, or putting more effort into training a player from the lower leagues.

And before you say it, there are good enough players outside SL first teams to do that job for you. Keith Senior, Rob Purdham, Ade Gardner, Shaun Lunt, Danny Kirmond, Ewan Dowes, Gareth Raynor all came from outside the SL development system. There are more out there we need to find them.

Quote: Barnacle Bill "
You might have more of a point to say that Rovers' youth development hasn't been good enough but that still disregards the problems faced by a newly promoted SL club which you completely fail to acknowledge. I think it's fair to say that Rovers are now on par with Hull FC in terms of youth development and attractiveness of the club to young prospects, evidenced by the relative success at under 18 level. But most of those lads will still require time to get to a standard where they can be blooded in SL.'"

you have no way of judging that. Under 18s rugby is really a terrible judge of the quality of youth development. You could have the queensland back line at 17 in an academy but if the forwards are all youngsters still developing then they will be over-run and they arent going to win many games. But if you introduced Inglis, Slater, Boyd Tonga and Folou then you would say your youth development was doing pretty well

Quote: Barnacle Bill "
If you could for one minute remove the bias and consider what Hull KR have done well since being promoted you would surely have to recognise that they have got the majority of things right and while there is plenty of work yet to do the youth development at the club is progressing. How many other clubs can claim to have made the great strides forward in every department that Hull KR has in the last five years?'"

there is plenty of work to do in every department. I sometimes think that RL suffers as a sport because of how happy people seem to be with accepting the mediocre or building it up to 'great' when it isnt.

Hull KR fail in many many areas, They can get to the level they should be, and it is doing them a disservice to say they are doing 'great' when they are where they are.