Can’t speak for Castleford, but Trinity are already in the process of redevelopment of Belle Vue,. The club house has been considerably upgraded ready for the upper floor being made into a community gym and coffee house, lower floor, into community changing rooms, showers, and office space. This week has seen the replacement of the first of the four Floodlights with up to date technology. The planning application for the new East Stand is due to be heard shortly. Small steps that’s taken years, but at the end of this season, we should see the demolition of the old East stand, and upgrade to the North stand. Only fly in the ointment at the moment is the possibility of relegation from SL.

Hopefully it continues

Castleford have NOT been allowed to have an ' elite ' Academy.
Neither have HULL KR who are improving their stadium.

It is my opinion that all clubs playing in Super League should have academies and so should those in the championship who aspire to play in Super League. I can't comment on why certain clubs bids were rejected for academies as i don't know what all the criteria was, but perhaps it's a money issue. Perhaps the RFL thought they would go for quality over quantity, but i don't know. Personally i think the more academies we have the better as it increases out playing base.
On a positive note i do see that all Super League teams must have reserve sides next season which a agree with.

They don’t require academies if the community game already supports a pathway. That’s the issue here.

Congratulations to Newcastle. Leigh and cas could learn something from that

It’s exactly what you did you absolute fool, that’s the point.

Today’s Bradford simply aren’t even close so why should past glories count for you and not for us.

Trinity’s academies have won all there 2021 opening games, that’s 2021 not 2012, now go get a life and accept tour club is not what it once pretended to be.

Oh and if you knew anything about RL only Neil came through the ranks at Trinity

I don't know about this.... It seems to me that if we only had the community game lots of players would drop off playing at age 14 & 15 as they do in soccer and even moreso at 16 and 17 when the world opens up many many choices for them. The club foundations that run the development aim to show the best youngsters that there is a career path into the academy and into pro-RL.

In short the professional clubs seek to find the best talent as soon as they can and keep them in the game with the prospect of a pro career being dangled before their eyes attainable by going through academy. Of course that dream isn't really open to any more than the elite few and hundreds of kids dreams are shattered hence most don't go crawling back to their community clubs.....

It may be a good thing that (for instance) scores of kids aren't dragged into the Cas and Wakey academies and then all but a couple IF THAT get duly jettisoned as failures.

What's more if a quality kid wants a career in RL with his dad's support they look for the bigger clubs anyway so don't some cas, fev and wakey lads go Leeds? Like Rob Burrow (Fev Lions) and Leeds lads who played at Oulton juniors? I think the change from quantity to quality is sensible.

I know Bulls are trying to say that John Bateman may never have been a top RL player but for Bradford academy - but he'd have simply gone to Leeds or Fartown??.

I think anyone who wants a pro-RL career generally wants to be in a quality academy.

He’d have gone to Wigan but he didn’t that’s the point. Who’s to say if Saints didn’t have an academy Lomax wouldn’t have signed for Warrington?

It’s all conjecture the fact is he did come through our academy as did a great number of top level players.

That also ignores the players that have come through over the last few years and continue to that weren’t taken on by Superleague academies.

The best example being James Bentley. He was a scholar at Fev and they didn’t even play him. None of the super league clubs wanted him. If he hadn’t been spotted by Bradford he wouldn’t be playing for Saints or anyone else now.

Fact is the game needs a bigger talent pool.

James Bentley, Ethan Ryan, Matty Storton, Rowan Milnes, Oliver Wilson.

I don't know about Cas or Leigh, but Bradford and HKR are still waiting for their explanation as of yesterday. The only 2 options for the delay i can think of are the RFL are trying to save money by walking to each club to hand deliver the explanation - or they didn't expect this level of backlash and are quickly rewriting the explanations to allow an appeal from those clubs to work and allow themselves to save face.

I can't see HKR taking this lying down, esp when they've plenty of legal experience at the top.

I was actually proud they took to the field , 8 hours after the RFL told them they were all going to lose their scholarships and their dreams. It was a shame that the RFL had messed with their heads so much that they couldn't perform to their usual level.

Pre-pandemic, the Bulls u19's and u16's were generally midtable, trying to sneak into the playoffs on the last game of the season, that sort of thing. Post-pandemic, the academy system has been adjusted quite a bit for this year.

Academies are about developing players for 1st team rugby - it's not all about results.