Quite impressed and suprised by Widnes score, equal to ourselves. They at least seem to be on the right track.

Agree about Widnes, surprised.

We'll be all 1's next year with all the youth who have places in our squad now. As long as no major changes happen we'll be alright for a few good years.

The report doesn't have an assessment date on, just stating 2014. So if this was completed in pre season, before the debuts of Ormsby, Philbin, King x 2 etc and before O'Brien, the Evans' and Laithwaite held regular first team spots, you could understand on the lack of production. The more time that these guys play, the higher we will grade, and there are a lot more in the under 19's and under 16's demonstrating enough quality to become first team members.

It has been done in the past couple of weeks

Their overall score was reduced by the fact that have coaches who are not level 3 qualified. I'm not sure how that affects the 'achievements of our academy' category, but it mentions that the lack of qualifications is the main reason for the lower scores.

It's good to see our local clubs all doing well. Saints and Wigan have been ahead in this regards for years now, hence the year on year stories of highly rated academy players moving to Saints or Wigan from Wire or Widnes. But it seems now that both Wire and Widnes are closing the gap, which can only be a good thing for the sport.

It's definitely time to look at increasing the benefits of having a strong academy on the salary cap. Taking it to the extreme, if one academy produced 17 world class players, it should be able to keep them all provided it can sustainably afford them. We've got a situation now where the academies at Saints, Wigan and Leeds (To this point despite their low scores on this round) are too strong and they aren't able to keep as many as they would like. I'd suggest possibly massively reducing the cap (£0.75m?) and excluding academy products, but also having an overall cap linked to financial status to prevent clubs overspending.

Putting B-teams in the lower leagues could be a solution or professional clubs being allowed to adopt an amateur side.

Excellent for us, only behind Stains, Pies and Leeds (not really a surprise)

Is there a cap on how much can be invested in club academies? You'd have thought given that Koucash wants to turn Salford into a major player in SL that he would've put some effort into their academy, looks like they've gone backwards according to this.

From what I understand there is a lot of discussion atm on the youth system for next year. Very briefly though, only 8 (max) SL Academies will be allowed next year, they will need to be accredited, and will be given 3 year licences. The Academies will be allowed up to 30 players within the U19 age group. Players will have to be given contracts and paid a minimum wage ( I think it was in the region of £2k in 2013). I have not heard if there is to be a maximum salary bill for the age group though, e.g. if a club want's to pay extra to attract a very promising youngster.

Warrington are now in front of Leeds and considering we scored 'one' on most aspects I am a bit surprised we are marked down as an overall 'two'.

You would suspect a perfect score will be acheived in 2015.

There is already a minimum wage in place of £3k.

The overall score given is whatever your lowest mark is hence the reason Leeds are an overall 3