Quote Mrs Barista="Mrs Barista"It is strange. It has to be a good thing provided there are reasonable opposition teams, but I'm a bit surprised by it tbh, in a good way. Vital to provide a pathway for players not ready for SL at 19 which is likely to be the vast majority of the merged academy graduates.'"
It is good that there will be another path, obviously for the SL clubs involved, but also for young players. It'll be interesting to see how they approach it - will u23s and and the possibility of a run out in SL be better/more attractive than playing in the Championships, or even dual reg (and possibility of a run out in SL)?
Lot's of variables will influence the decision. Getting players to make up numbers might be the tough part. The ones who are getting the idea they're not going to be SL players, are thus not paid much, but are at the point where they could play first-team for a second tier team. The standard within teams could be pretty uneven.
There is a significant risk that players are lost, who could have made SL, under the current system. But we have to be realistic about how much of their early manhood players can hang about waiting for something that in most cases won't happen. In some ways the Championship is the best path, imo. PITA commutes from Hull for part-timers though.
