I think they rate him, I think what they don't rate is the likelihood of getting a full season out of Horne or the possibility of retaining Long. If we are concerned wether our youngsters are good enough they should be being loaned out so they are playing competitive games every week, it just seems we let them stagnate, and that isn't right.

I do get that, we had plenty berating Agar for playing Lyne at Salford last season, yes he didn't have a great game but then neither did any of the team to be fair and to single him out like some did was not fair on him.

People say this player and that player are not ready for super league but until they are thrown into it we will never know. By all accounts (Wilfs diary etc) Sam Moa was not exactly setting the reserves alight last season yet when he came into the 1st team he transformed into a different player.

We had a few opportunities to play some youngsters this season. We played Donny in our first friendly were Williams was the stand out player, yet the week after we play Cas in a friendly and Agar thought it best to play the full 1st team rather than have a sprinkling of youth in there to see how they fare against super league opposition. Again like Paul said we had the Oldham and the Widnes games to give a few players a runout. Aldous & Kent (or was it Cunnigham?) had a little but of game time against Oldham but not too much.

We have around 8 youth players named in our first team squad but very few have even set foot on the pitch in a competitive game. Why stick someone like Sharp on the bench for a 5 minute cameo he may as well stick one of the youngster on the bench.

The fact we are the only club in Super League not to give a single club trained player their SL debut this season is disgraceful.

The point I was trying to make was that the whole attitude at the club leans towards populating our 1st team with imports rather than putting the effort into our youth system.

I didn't intend it to become another Agar bashing thread, i think there's more to it than that, although he must take a fair amount of the responsibility for their development.

I just don't think that as a club youth development is taken that seriously, and the U20 players who are on full-time contracts are just there so that the club can satisfy the 'homegrown' franchise criteria.

Think you have hit the nail right on the head there,

He should at least use a young player in his specialist position to cover for an injured first choice player, rather than moving first teamers around and making them play out of position.

which brings up another thing we should consider, are we missing out on other youngsters who think "no point going to Hull, I wont get any game time"

From the Hull FC Website:

[i"Much of Agar‘s focus has remained on developing and nurturing home grown talent and he has played a pivotal part in helping to restructure the club ‘s youth programmes alongside the rest of the coaching team.

Developing home grown stars certainly looks like it will be the life blood of the domestic game and in turn, the success of the international setup and this is something Agar believes passionately in"[/i

I appreciate you not wanting to turn this into an Agar bashing thread but the fact is that youth development is supposed to be his main area of strength, yet he has been at the club for nearly seven (seven!) years and in that time we've only gone backwards in terms of youngsters coming through.

I'm afraid it's just another area where Agar has failed to deliver what was promised.

Completely agree, but who's monitoring his progress on the YD front?

James Rule has CEO should be ramming the importance of YD down the throat of everyone in the organisation and making it a key 'mission' for the club.

It's fine setting up the Jets programme, giving lads full-time contracts and scouting lads from Scotland/Cumbria, but ultimately, success will be measured by their contribution to the 1st team, which is pretty much non-existant.

I think that Rovers hitting Super League has had a big impact short-term on Hulls youth development. In the past Hull signed pretty much all of the best local talent so some was bound to come through. However, Rovers had a big initial investment in the Academy and managed to snare what i believe was the lions share of the best local talent. That is now bearing fruit with the likes of Taylor hitting the first team. Previously he would be hitting Hulls first team now.
What i will say though is having seen your youngsters in action this year, you have some fantastic prospects at 16/17 years of age. It may take 2 or 3 years and a bit of patience but some of these will make very good Super League players.

Personally i think it is down to the mentality of the old BOD.

Kath basically had a policy that first team players (or high earners) should play as they are being paid for it and using youngsters means boosting there deals once theyve played a certain amount of games.

you mean like employing a cheap coach that you know isn't up to it so that you never have to pay much out in win bonuses?? never, surely not!!!