hull KR has had an interesting recent history that belies its parochial geographical location. The club has a strong tradition of support for players from Papua-New Guinea, with the mercurial Stanley Gene being one of its most popular players. The club was also renowned for having once had on its rosters the greatest ever indigenous Australian rugby league player, Arthur Beetson. Today it has evolved into an even more pluralistic and cosmopolitan club, with a player roster that encompasses many countries, cultures and races.

Consider some of its 2015 roster:

Indigenous Australians: Albert Kelly, Maurice Blair
Papua-New Guinean: Neville Costigan
French: Kevin Larroyer
Italian-Australian: Joshua Mantellato
Asian-Australian: Kenneth Sio

Hull KR is now the most ethnically diverse club in Super League.

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As usual you have only crude, misplaced cynicism, not anything constructive or intelligent to contribute, to a legitimate posting about the social character of our game.

good to see a heartland club bringing it's own homegrown players through

Now they just need a couple of English lads and they'll be all set.

its a joke. shame they dont invest more in bringing through british talent. seems to be same every pre season with them bringing in overseas players.

what happened to the rule where you were only allowed so many? seems to have changed in recent seasons

Shouldn't you be busy queuing up for your season ticket, better hurry up or you might have to get a seat within sight of another human being.

Hull KR sell out every game and average twice the giants gates don't they? is that why you can mock our crowds?

Oh hang on....


Anyway back on topic I'm pretty sure there are young lads in the championship who are as good if not better than these players coming from down under?

We are the modern global world represented in a RL team. Hull KR know no borders!

The rules are still there and I would assume the RFL ensure that they are being adhered to...

I believe that a greater emphasis on our academies whilst under franchise would hopefully have brought us more success than the route we have taken. Our chairman has even indicated that with hindsight that he got the balancing act wrong of growing a sustainable local talent pool, whilst still putting a team out there that could win games using imports. That ship has sailed!

We are now in a promotion and relegation system and the need to get into that top 8 or not get relegated from the bottom 4 means that we need to compete with our rivals. Having a quick scan at the squads for next year ( I may be wrong on some so I apologise) Catalans, Salford, Hull, Wakefield all have the same or more than us. We actually have 6 Southern Hemisphere players, which I believe is less than all those named.

What should we do? Have some altruistic view that because we've had our fair share of overseas players we shouldn't bother this year and look to get relegated.

As for your final point some of the teams I have named (including ourselves) will get to see whether we would have been better going down the Championship player route.

Whatever the pros and cons of Hull KR's recruitment policy might be, they still punch way above their weight.

The same cannot be said for their neighbours who are, without a shadow of a doubt, the most underperforming club throughout the entire SL era.

Hull do technically have 7, but Miller won't be here much longer.

I don't object to overseas players as long as they improve the team they are in and don't block the path of any really promising youngsters. Imo the one player we have who will do this is Minichiello. He might turn out to be great, but I am concerned he will be bang average and will slow down the progress of Hadley and Turgut. We aren't particularly blessed in the other positions where we have overseas guys (I suppose Callum Lancaster on the wing, but he'll get plenty of chances anyway).

However for all Radfords faults. He will leave out an overseas player in favour of a youngster is he thinks that's the way to go. Rankin won't be first choice anyway.

They aren't going to risk relegation by bloodied youngsters, and they aren't going to put money in to building an acceptable academy when it might not pay off for 5 years by which time they could be back as semi pro playing in front of hundreds again and that academy is dismantled.

Under P+R staying up isn't just first priority it's the only one. That's why we saw clubs with 15 overseas players and barely an nrl game between them and it's why we saw next to no English coaches, and why our academies were so pants outside the big 4.

No point blaming clubs, as long as they are in SL they won't care.

Franchised mediocrity has gone Smokey.

You need to get over it.

For the first time in years, the club you support will now have to set their ambitions higher than finishing 5th or 6th.

I thought Hull had 8 now (Michaels, Paea, Sa, Feka, Talanoa, Miller, Rankin, Mini)?

I do agree though that Radford did seem more willing to play the youngsters this last year. I guess that the hope will be that those players have that extra development under their belts come next year.