I think we once claimed Basil Richards was the 'new Hanley'. Pretty much a comedy club back then. I've just been in St.bens club and they had a re-run of the 2009 Cup final playing on the big screen. I've just had to watch the likes of morley, Briers, King, monaghan, Westwood etc playing for us a few hours after hearing we've re-signed matty Russell! What on earth has happened to this club? It's not as if we're skint.

An outbreak of common sense, thanks!

I watched several reserve games last year and the gulf between their matches & super league looked massive. I understand the clamour to give youngsters a chance but many are just not ready physically. You can see why we lend young players out to Championship sides we need to somehow bridge the gap.

I don't think we have a SL club that can put out two full teams, so the title of 'Reserves' is a bit of a misnomer (officially only Dan Brewin and Luke Thomas were our only Reserves last year). So if you followed the Reserve games you would see that three quarters of the team were in fact our U19's, and some of those were not even in their final year. So the idea appears to have been to provide a challenge to those Academy players who need more experience than an U19 game can provide. I suspect that the format will have been viewed largely as a success, but as Smithy points out there is certainly a significant gap in the physicality of the SL game and U19's. I guess there is no easy way to avoid that if you want to expose and up and coming youngster. Not sure that games in the Championship is the answer either as from what I see it is played a bit slower, but its just as rough.

Just to mention also, I think all but two of the newly promoted Scholarship players got a game in the Reserves and Jake Thewliss played a lot of matches (and featured in the Academy Roses games). He seemed to start the season looking very lively, and it may be just my imagination but seemed to be pretty jaded towards the end of the season. The coaches will know far better than me, but this may also be the downside of asking a junior to step up a level (or two).

Some interesting comments, but I still think with Russell that were looking to the past, rather than to the future.

Whereas with me, after the flops of almost a decade, (and yes, Matty was part of that), better the devil you know. I’m happy with Matty. He’s no full back, but he’s lively, plays fearless and isn’t afraid to face the fans who write him off and a few that have been quite nasty too. That shows some balls to me, to back himself. We’ve missed players that are willing to back themselves. Like Nat Wood, doesn’t always come off, but no fear in keep on trying.
When a player gets knocked down and wants to get back on the horse, that shouts volumes to me.