Tautai

Quote: Adam_Harrison9 "It's a pretty simple situation. If the homegrown players can't cut it - which they can't - then I'd rather we get imports in that can. Nationality doesn't matter one iota to me. It is the responsibility of homegrown players first and foremost to show they can cut the mustard. It's no surprise that nearly all our imports are the better players in our team

Not a bad assessment. The way i see it is that we have 3 groups of players in our squad; The overseas imports, British players signed from other clubs and our own home grown talent. Now, rank those three groups in order of best to worst according to the number of players making the best contributions, regardless of team form, and I think people would have to concede that the rankings would be as follows:

1) The overseas imports
2) Brits from other clubs
3) our own talent pool

Take aiton, tim smith, poore, ali and collis out of our team and we'd be a lot closer to the wooden spoon than we already are. Now look at the Brits from other clubs...mathers, lee smith, charlie, kirmond etc... they're all holding their place down and contributing more than the talent that we're developing ourselves. Annakin aside, our 'stars of the future' are all struggling to stand out in the championship, and for that reason we cannot just give them all a go like some people are calling for. They woud quite simply be out of their depth.

Id love us to be a top 6 team on a regular basis and we're currently living proof that we cant achieve that with what weve got, nevermind promoting youth. The only way we're going to make those strides is to attract better british players from other clubs and a higher class of overseas import.