Quote: Father Ted "Not sure who is "investing" in youth and who is not.
Apart from money, what also seems to be a problem is that some clubs are plundering scholorship products of others less wealthy.
This is giving the impression that there isn't sufficient talent being produced and spread across the league but concentrated in the few but wealthy clubs.
It's time clubs who produce real talent from their scholarship teams are more able to keep them.
There used to a regulation that a club could only sign one youth player a year from outside their service area. Don't know what happened to that rule but it doesn't seem to apply anymore.
We need to go back to that or perhaps that a club is only allowed one player every two years from outside their service area. That would oblige clubs to develop their own schools, service area, amateur clubs and the youth system in their own area than spending big plundering talent developed by other clubs.'"
It's clear from looking at the "academy origin" of current SL players (excluding overseas ones) that just half a dozen clubs provide the vast majority of players.
Wigan (40)
Leeds (2icon_cool.gif
Bradford (26)
Castleford (24)
Saints (23)
Hull FC (21)
It's high time the others produced their own talent instead of relying on other clubs' cast-offs.