Watching Hull KR this season after finishing bottom of the league last year can’t believe this hasn’t been discussed more. Normal year last year and Hull KR would have been battling it out in the championship. They’ve invested heavily in youth over the last couple of years and are now seeing the results. Surely a licensing system needs to be brought back in to give teams the chance to blood younger players without the threat of relegation every year. I know it’s not as simple as that with expansion etc all on the cards but we seem to copy a lot of what the Aussie league does apart from this and the gap between the 2 leagues has never been bigger than now

No thanks are you forgetting we could have gone down
If the Crusaders had not thrown in the towel at the last minute.

Are you off your tits??

Invested heavily in youth?

They are on the same track as Salford = bust, boom, bust!

John Bastion leaving them tells you all you need to know (as does having Ben Cockayne looking after their youth).

Bookmark this thread for 10 months time...

I wasn’t referring to the academy, rather squad recruitment and strategy, taking young domestic players from the lower leagues, developing them then giving them a chance to prove themselves. And I mean a proper chance not just a handful of games. Abdull and Lewis are a halfback pairing who are 80minutes away from a grand final. Who would have thought that 24 months ago. That’s because they’ve had a settled period and a coach who’s developed them. Throw in relegation last year and potentially they’ve both moved on to different teams back to square one down the pecking order learning new playing schemes. As for bust or boom next year will have to wait and see.

You always get a season where a unfancied club gate crashes the party, we did it in 2004, Salford more recently. Sadly we drop back down to our level as we are unable to sustain it like the bigger clubs. That's not to say I haven't been impressed with HKR or enjoyed their style of play, but in reality it's a duff season. They only won one more game than we did, all be it played 4 games less.

Still good on them for nilling Wire at home, and I wouldn't be surprised if they beat Catalans either. They've run them close twice I think.

Am i right in saying they only won 1 more than us, yes they played some less but they where hard games they missed including saints and catalans. Kr did well last night but warrington where very poor and on last night showing all 11 other sl cubs would of beat them.think it now clear to see how far catalans and saints are ahead of every other team

Rovers were always going to improve under Tony Smith. He's an excellent coach who's done well everywhere he's been. They've recruited well and turned decent players into good ones.

But let's not get carried away, they finished 6th in a 12 team league and have benefited from playing less games than everybody else.

So it's' nothing to do with the coaching ,or a half who was playing in is dinner jacket

The praise Hull KR have been getting is vomit inducing. It’s like no other club has gone down the “youth route” before.

8 quite like HKR but the over the top love in by the sky pundits is sickening.
I would be prepared to take it one stage further, they (sky) have a hidden agenda to push certain clubs forward while disregarding others.

8 quite like HKR but the over the top love in by the sky pundits is sickening.
I would be prepared to take it one stage further, they (sky) have a hidden agenda to push certain clubs forward while disregarding others.

I’m not one for franchising to be fair.

As rightly posted, we would have gone down if it wasn’t for Crusaders. Also, if it were a box ticking exercise like last time, there would be some boxes that probably we wouldn’t tick.

As for the Hull KR bit, yes, they’ve played less games than us, and I do think the system stinks. I do remember though, some games, it was the other sides doing. Not sure who they were due to play in all those cancelled games, but I do think a couple were against sides that finished lower than us, so the % may not alter that much.

As for not being much better, I think as things stand now, they are slightly better, and I think that’s down to having a good coach, with a positive mindset, who knows what he wants, personally, I would have gone for someone like that to replace Chester, aided by some steady recruitment, and a good support base, which helps them to spend up to the full cap.

What I mean by steady recruitment, TS wanted Hull KR to break into the top 6 this year, and brought in players to do that. He has achieved that and now wants to build on that, and has already started recruiting for next year.

As for support base, I don’t know where they’re at this year, but when they were in the championship, they were getting in 7000 every week, in the same season, probably our best under Chester, a top 5 finish, and our crowds were 2k lower. I think this was the same year when MC said if we could get 6-6500 on the gate, we would spend close to the full cap.

Hopefully, good response from Vasty’s leaflets, positive stadium news, maybe a few new signings too, plus WP continued good results, then who knows, those turnstiles could click a few more times.

Would happily re visit this post 12 months on, we may win more games next year and be play off contenders, but at the same time, other teams don’t stand still either.

I could be wrong but I think 2 of the teams they had cancelled were Saints & Catalans

A touch of perspective.
HKR managed to avoid 5 games this season:- Saints (home & away), Warrington (Home), Salford (Away) & Hull (home).
There is a better than even chance that they would not have won a single point from those games and I suspect that our attitude at Leigh might have been different if we were pushing for top 6 rather than a "dead rubber", but that's irrelevant.
HKR finished with 2 more points than Trinity, we received an apology for a poor refereeing decision that cost a game.
Our points difference with HKR was -105. That would have been erased with the unplayed games.
If's, but's and maybe's - but there's not much between 3rd and 11th at the moment though I'm sure the chequebooks will be out in certain quarters to remedy that situation.