Your teams homegrown 17...

Quote: Father Ted "The way this thread is going there does appear to be a need to separate "homegrown" players from "club trained".

Home grown perhaps being players who have come through the schools and amateur clubs and scholarship schemes.
Club Trained as is quoted in the rules as a player who has been at a club three years before he no longer qualifies for the U20s.

What is happeneing now is that smaller SL clubs who run good scholarship schemes are having their best players poached by larger SL clubs who do not develop RL at school amd amateur level. These larger clubs then classify the players as "club trained" due to the 3 year rule as they are signed at 16-17 years of age.

The "Club Trained" should be replaced by "Home Grown" There is a massive difference. All clubs should be forced to develop the schools in their area and run quality scholarship schemes. Not just poach other clubs scholarship players and suggest they are their own.
Most ludicrous case being Salford who took Myler from Widnes to the Willows and he counted as Salford's "club trained" player. Beggars belief does that!'"

I understand your point but the days of having a team full of players all born within 2 miles of a club's ground are over. If a club such as Warrington is prepared to go to South Wales and scout out 2 promising youngsters such as the Evans twins and bring them to Warrington and to rugby league at age 15 then they shouldn't be punished for doing so in my opinion, as this is clearly benefiting the game in many ways.

There is lots of movement at scholarship level with 16 year olds moving between clubs. Wigan, Warrington and Saints have all been signing each others scholarship players to their Academy teams in the past few months for example. This competition is probably a good thing and for example, has led to all 3 of these clubs investing heavily in youth coaches, training facilities etc in order to be more attractive to promising players, which again is a good thing. Most clubs have probably lost a few scholarship players to other teams, my own club Warrington having lost Kallum Waktins and Joe Mellor for example, but I dont think there is a case of one super league club consistently losing all of its best players to another that is just poaching them all.

I agree it's important to increase participation and interest within a club's own town, which is something Wigan have clearly been better at than other clubs, no doubt boosted by the success the club has historically enjoyed. But this is only one aspect of the picture and should not be the sole focus on youth development. Anything that gets the country's best young players, playing our game and improving as much as possible is a good thing.