Quote: knockersbumpMKII "And yet we got to Wembley three times and a GF in the 6 years before AP took over the club, won one CC, unlucky in both the others due to a heap of injuries and outclassed in '06 by a top St.Helens side.
The only difference under AP's tenure is we've won one more trophy but been to 2 fewer finals.
The simple fact is we have less home grown talent in the starting XVII now than we did in the 2006 GF team which had EIGHT home grown players in the side.
Yeaman (22)
Cooke (25)
Horne (23)
Radford (27)
Washbrook (20)
Wheeldon (20)
G.Horne (23)
King (24)
I personally don't think we've improved in developing the youngsters, we've gone backwards, buying a team that was over the cap to win the CC is all well and good but it's not a long term sustainable plan and that has come home to oost last year and this, even former players like Kirk Dixon have said that our youngsters are not experienced enough/not up to scratch. As I've pointed out, it's not that there aren't good youngsters coming through but there has been a decidedly lack of quality players or development of players to come through the system in the last 6 years, especially considering the investments that have been made.'"
So there were 8 players in 2006. If we were to get to a final this season we could expect to see the following in our matchday 17:
Shaul, Taylor (home grown as in club trained, or from Hull??), Houghton, Green, Bowden, Hadley, Westerman (came through the Hull academy) and then most likely Fash or Matongo. That is 8 also.
Considering that between 2007 and 2011 the academy was neglected, I don't think that is a bad turnaround
[size=100:2fjo96hf][i:2fjo96hf]Black 'n' White's Best Female 2006 & Runner Up 2007 & 2008[/i:2fjo96hf][/size:2fjo96hf] 
