Will be interesting to see how this will work,

My guess is either a draft system or just allowing both clubs to offer professional contracts and giving the youngsters a choice. Can't see how a system of one year on and one year off working at all. I guess we hold the power in the agreement so can see Adam using this to our advantage, just look at the SMC agreement ruthless and a smart cookie.

FC will have the pick of the bunch, ambitious players will want to play for the top club in the City and now we have pushed Agar aside we have a great opportunity to pull away from our neighbours

KR will pick up the 2nd rate players however, with the improved facilities and coaching staff will benefit from trying to run the academy on a shoestring or drop it completely (not sure how the licence works with this?)

Hull will benefit by improving the facilities expertise the kids will have to develop and hopefully avoid our Super League friends from raping the area of promising talent again.

Our 18/19/20 year olds were the best players in Hull, if not Yorkshire at Under 16's level and were promising players, now some people criticise them so don't get too carried away. As soon as the players hit 16+ we done seem to progress as much as other SL teams. Don't know if it's down to coaching, drink culture or what. Probably lack of investment at youth levels. AP has invested on youth and hopefully we will see the youngsters maintain and improve like Wigan, Warrington, Leeds etc because the talent is here in Hull.

I consider one of the factors to be lack of actual game time/experience, once they hit 17s the academy players in Hull can no longer play for their amateur club yet when you travel around Yorkshire all the other clubs allow their young 17s to play for their amateur clubs right up to the Christmas so they actually get 6 months extra game time. A bulk of the academy lads from Hull at 18s have played approx 12 games in a year I actually know a couple who have only managed 6 games in a year., kids are not going to progress with that amount of game time.

What concerns me is all the talk of a SL-wide reduction of the number of academies. I just fail to see how this will do anything other than reduce the already struggling talent pool with less teams for young players to play in, or am I missing something? A colossally bad move for English RL if it really does go ahead IMO.

Very concerning. Are Wigan and Saints being told to merge their academies?

I agree...

I think that the 'problem' is that the top players in Hull tend to realistically play for 2 or maybe 3 clubs at each age group hence why as a city we tend to do really well in the junior county competitions.

Compare it to West Yorkshire where the talent is far more spread out but come together at scholarship level.

I think thats a no brainer mate haha

Any o this confirmed? All I know is that the Sirius academy is a sports college specialising in rugby, is it not a company set up to help fund this as it would benefit both teams and could kind of do away with scholarships, which IMHO aren't great. The fall off rate is high a people develop differently and investing individually may prove frivolous some times. As someone posted earlier the potential to success rate is low.
Would love to know the full details though.

How old in rugby years would the players be?

I never realised rugby players where like cats when it came to years? how many human years in a rugby year?

Steve Menzies!!!!

Kit launched for the new teams

Seems to go against making the game stronger with more home grown players in the game .
Think this is another nudge to combine the 2 teams by the idiots at Redhall.

It's the two clubs' decision, I believe.