It's not RU/RL picking them up. It's them picking RU/RL. If they have the aptitude for the sport, then 95% or more of them will pick it. There just aren't a quantity of RL suited players hanging about in sprinting/wrestling and basketball that aren't playing any form of rugby just waiting to be picked up, that aren't picked up by current scouting of RL and RU and trials programmes.

As to making a career in soccer, well I live in a village of 4000 people, the local soccer clubs pays it's players and coaching staff. The nearby town of 22000 people has several clubs that pay their players. And this is a rugby county with little interest in soccer.

The RFL need to decide if they want england to compete on the international stage or if the standard of super league is more important.

If we decide to put england first then super league may well suffer for a good few years as changes to player imports, number of teams and salary cap changes.

IMO i'd like to see:

Super league reduced to 12 teams
Imports reduced to 3 ( only 3 in total, none of this fed trained, aussies with english grandad rubbish)
All yougsters brought thru the club from a early age should have a reduction against the salary cap.

The big change for me would be having home grown players that have come thru the ranks at club level having reduction on the salary cap. To many young players are cut from super league squads due to the salary cap. God knows how much talent we are losing due to clubs striving to get under the cap.

why would they? RL really isnt played by that many amateurs, and certainly not that many at outside the heartlands, and even fewer at the right age and with the right coaching.

Most amateur RL players fail to make it to professional level because of the inherent athletic potential needed to be a top class athlete, i cant see how identifying more of those with the inherent athletic ability, bringing them to RL would fail to bring through more quality RL players.

And as you mention the trials programmes, maybe these players are on these programmes but clubs arent taking the risk. When you can pick up a ready made prop from the NRL or the heartlands, why take a chance on a wrestler who only has a very basic understanding at the game. Think of how much better Liam Botham would have been had we picked him up at 15 rather than 25.
Soccer is all encompasing. i doubt you will find an able 16 year old boy in the country who hasnt given it a shot. There are a huge amount of youngsters who havent tried RL who would probably enjoy it. I think we should give them all the chance and would love for RL to in the same position, but while that is unrealistic we should focus our efforts on giving it to as many as have that inherent athletic ability as possible.

Which is why I have consistently referred to "rugby" rather than RL. Have no doubt that junior RU is heavily scouted.


....and what makes you think there is a stack of these top class athletes suited to RL playing minority sports instead?



Is it the clubs not taking the risk or the players not taking the risk? How would you have persuaded a 15 year old Liam Botham to give up the time he was investing in RU and cricket, and invest it in RL instead? If clubs aren't investing time in training someone who has previously shown no interest in carrying a ball and running with it and tackling people, and are instead investing their time in a player who has shown both an interest and an aptitude for that, then there is likely a good reason.




In which case the answer is to invest the resources the sport has in to development officers and junior coaching, rather than invest those resources in sending scouts to athletics and wrestling meets

But if they arent playing RL they arent playing RL. I never enjoyed playing RU, I loved playing RL. I dont think RU comes close hoovering those we miss, but there are still lots out there who may not want to play RU but do want to play RL.
Because very few players come from outside the heartlands. There isnt something intrinsic within a Yorkshire athlete that means they are more suited to RL than a Cornish athlete, there are just very few who have the opportunity try RL and very very few who are picked up and get the training they would need.

Botham himself said he wished he had found RL earlier.

There simply isnt the level of coverage throughout the country to assum everyone who a) has the inherent natural athletic ability and b) would like to play RL has had the opportunity to play it.


they should be two completely separate things with two separate sources of funding. They arent mutually exclusive. I dont why we cant do both, it wouldnt cost a whole lot of money.

Besides it cant be cheap sending someone over to Australia a couple of times a year.

No, they're playing RU. We'll find them in that sport. Unless they want to play RL but don't want to play RU, in which case we'll find them in RL. Getting development officers out will give them a chance to play.



Perhaps that just shows how hard a sport it is to learn.
If we want to give them that opportunity though, it's going to be through community development officers and junior clubs, not through sending scouts to trampolining competitions.


So we need to get more development officers out there.


But they are not, and they never will be. Money is money and can be used for anything. Any money we invest in one thing is money no longer available to be invested elsewhere.



We could stop doing that. Although there are many that feel Australia are ahead of us and we need to keep an eye on what they're up to.

All you seem to be arguing is that sending scouts out to different sports to identify talent and increasing development officers are mutually exclusive. They clearly arent.

And money isnt money, it comes from different places and has differing responsibilities, we are getting £30m from sport england that can solely be used for increasing participation, it cant be used for anything else. There is no issue with the RFL spending that £30m on increasing participation and clubs spending maybe £30k a year on scouting and training a few players who havent tried RL before but the have the inherent athletic ability to be able to.

in which case we should be sending young coaches out there, not scouts, or CEO's to sign players/

So where is the money coming from to send the scouts, and why do you think it's more worthwhile there than in community coaches?


Which is the source that can be send on scouting, but can't be sent on coaching?


I agree. Well, coach coaches might be more effective than the coaches themselves, as would bringing better coaches here to teach our coaches.

By the time a kid is identified as an elite athlete at one particular sport (whether that be athletics, football, gymnastics or whatever) it's usually because they've made the decision to pursue that particular sport ahead of all others and devote their free time to it.

Turning up to say the English schools athletics championships and asking the 400m winner whether he's ever fancied playing rugby league is going to be an exercise in futility. He's already picked his sport and his event and will be devoting all his time to being the best at it he can possibly be.

For what it costs in time and money to do that sort of targeted scouting you can probably get 100 kids in a school somewhere playing the game and take your chances that one of those goes on to play the sport at the top level.

Question.

If the whole problem is playing numbers. Why hasnt the English soccer team got to more than one major final in its entire history, and why hasnt it got to more than a couple semi-finals in its entire history?

Think you'd need to go to some soccer forum to ask them.
I suspect you'd issues such as number of non-English players at the top level (which is a far greater problem for that sport than it is in RL) club power, junior focus on winning rather than coaching, winter seasons and available training facilities not conducive to skills training.
I don't know enough about their elite player pathways to comment on that aspect. I give anecdotal evidence (Villa, Cov and Birmingham U18s teams used to run trial matches next to where we coached the RL RPDC this year) that even at U18 level, the pro club squads are dominated by foreign players.
Anyway, besides the point, it's a sport I'm not interested in.

Bingo. And just think how many kids a junior development officer costing <£30K a year can get around to. Thousands. Then on top of that, part of their role is typically coaching coaches and helping amateur clubs, something else people seem to be crying out for.

See Richie's point below.

Also, according to Sport England figures in July 2009 approximately 3m adults in the England participated in football (indoor or outdoor) once a month. Not sure, but I'd be surprised if that's a higher figure than say Brazil or even some other European countries

England has more prof players to pick from than NZ, alot more. Quantity is not the issue, its quality that's the problem.