Quote: LeythIg "For a sport with no lack of players, there was a hell of a lot of instances of teams that couldn't get 17 players together for matches. Plus a high number of players coming out of retirement. How many championship clubs are giving those 70 odd players a chance now? We've given chances to Brierley, Emmitt, Spencer, Hopkins, McNally, Armstrong, Ridyard etc... who have previously been let go by SL academies. Unfortunately we've moved to trying to get a squad of 25 "finished products", which is never going to end well.'"
Basically Toronto starting up has taken 25 of those players that previously would have been on our or Fevs roster , that will change as they bring in more Aussies to compete in SL in 2020 , that's why I wanted them out of our league now
The Championship needs to decide what it is going to be going forward , now the 8s are history there is no need to run full time at this level , in truth it should probably revert back to fully part time with a part time SC
As for ourselves once again , we are in no position to run an academy , there is no point , only once established in SL is it viable , and even then a huge task to actually produce any players of the quality required
I see regularly on here people highlighting Rowley,Baldwin,Donlan,Higham and how great they were for Leigh , no they weren't , they all left very early in their careers and only returned when they could no longer get a deal at a higher level , overal our return on investment from them has been poor
Build up a 9000 fan base and everything then becomes possible