Hi Mario! Bad news story of course you'll be straight back on. Sad person

Bad news..............if true.

The club signed several local lads over the years but the fact is they struggled to make a huge impact in the game. From memory a few local players I can recall the club signing were Watson, Darren Betts, Southern, Cousons, Burgess, Potts, Jaimison. I'm sure there were many others that either we can't remember or have never even heard of. The only one's that really developed into top division regulars were Blease, Fletcher, Groves and McAvoy.

If local kids were overlooked by Salford how many went to other clubs and made it apart from the small number I've already mentioned? The hard truth is the junior clubs in Salford aren't as strong at producing top quality kids compared to the traditional rugby towns like Wigan, Leigh, Warrington, St Helens, Oldham and Widnes. These elite junior clubs have a long history of producing the best kids from a larger pool and their development know-how gets passed from generation to generation.

Let's be honest the best academy kids we've had in the past 10 years were born in Wigan, Oldham, Halifax and France not Salford. I'm sure our local clubs are fully committed and trying their best with what they have but it's incomparable. It's all well and good developing links with local clubs but if a production line of quality isn't there it's worthless apart from a bit or PR.

I'm a proud Salfordian and I'd be bursting with pride watching a Salford team performing well in Superleague with a team full of local lads. However after 45 years and god knows how much time and money invested over the decades, I've realised it just isn't going to happen.

Scrapping the academy is a signal that the club has binned off any plans to build into a top 4 team and have reverted to survival mode. It's a real shame as the current academy had potential challenge the top 4 at U19's over the next few years. Last season's team had some good wins with a very young squad (remember the pasting they gave Leeds) given that they had only a handful of top age lads this season the future looked bright. From what I understand there's no going back now as they're all either at other clubs now are soon will be. Shame.

Personally, I can't believe that it isn't a requirement from the RFL that all superleague clubs have an academy.

I'd agree with that if the club were producing first team talent every year or two and players showed some loyalty when other clubs come knocking. I find it interesting that Leigh don't run an academy team considering the junior clubs in Leigh have a long tradition of producing a lot of talent. If cost for end result is the issue perhaps we should have approached Leigh about having a joint academy like Hull and Hull KR.

Who knows! Certainly one for the future to look at.Joint ventures can only assist the game and widen the areas.I don't see anything wrong with that.

It reduces the player pool by half for a start. Ask the HKR and Hull FC fans what they think of it - I'm sure you'll get a negative from them.

Possibly the case.Surely something is better than nothing though.

Disastrous decision. But just to confirm the club are still running a "Category 3" academy that will play in the university leagues. Each of these players are enrolled onto a BTEC degree and complete this whilst playing for us.

Our academy has been poorly financed and managed for years. Alan Hunte did a great job in attracting the "best of the rest" from neighbouring towns (Wigan, Saints, Oldham, Warrington etc) that the big teams didn't want. Unfortunately in the process he neglected the talent we had playing within Salford amateur teams and at the end of his spell in charge links with these local clubs were non-existent. More recently under Martin Gleeson and in particular Gareth Carvell the club have made some great progress within the local amateur game. Whilst still taking the "best of the rest" we implemented initiatives such as "Embed the Pathway" etc which takes promising kids from the ages of 14 upwards and puts them into our system.

The benefits of this programme would not have been realised for another 10 years when some of these 14, 15 and 16 year old lads matured into regular first teamers at Salford. This is such a short-sighted approach to saving roughly £100,000 and will put the club and it's relationship with local clubs back years.

Just what sort of legacy is Marwan Koukash trying to leave with us? I'm honestly appalled by it all.

I think some people are jumping all over the first opportunity to bash marwan again. I'm not a blind fan of his in fact am not a fan at all, but when you look at the cost of the academy and how many players we produce who actually stay with us, has it been financially worth it?

Personally, id prefer we throw loads of money at the academy and attract the best young kids from Salford, warrington, Wigan etc, but marwan has decided he needs to reign in his spending. That's his prerogative, and if he is reducing outlay on areas which arent giving him anything back then you struggle to argue.

Initially I was as angry about this as anyone else. It's certainly not nice for the young players we do have, and it's not nice to think of today's young kids not having chance to represent salford at that level. But after a night to think about it although still not happy I can see reasons.
But let's here what he has to say.

If you didn't know he's doing a Q&A session on Monday in the club bar, I guess this will be the main talking point!

I feel the same.

Initially I was upset like everyone else, but in the cold light of day its a decision to help the club become sustainable and will be a short-term negative in hopes that a settled few seasons of 'success' will bring in the required money to restart it properly. It will effect the long term development of local talent though, and so is still a gamble. With more success on the field we will hopefully bring more revenue into the Club both from punters and business.

At the end of the day, we need more people through the turnstiles, and the lack of income has crippled the club. MK can't keep pouring his own money into our sinkhole.

I feel sorry for the current crop of lads caught in the middle, Carvell seems to be doing his best to ensure most of them carry on with other Clubs, and we're still running an academy in the university leagues.

Reality is a bitch sometimes.

The entire sport has been poorly financed and managed for years. You mention that Hunte neglected talent playing with local Salford clubs but surely had this been 'genuine talent' other clubs would have signed and developed them. I'm not defending the club but it seems the blame for lack of local junior talent always seems to be apportioned to Salford Red Devils rather than accepting it's extremely rare to find them, let alone develop them. I'm not saying the local junior lads are poor it's just they haven't had the elite qualities a Superleague club is looking for.

The question is can we afford the academy we want: The Dr has had too look at expenditure over the next year of more and like any business person, realised the outgoings had to be cut.
Or walk away.

MK as most defiantly divided opinions, however I would suggest the biggest drop in supporters attending as more to do with MK management style & less to do with our club being perennial under achievers.

Disagree, we were well down in attendances long before marwan turned up