Yeah, but they made a fortune charging £5 to watch him train. At least 4 people turned up.

Come May/June Sean gleeson might be in double figures match appearances I mean....we have both bought players that have not set SL alight so des L your just opening a can of worms. & this'd thread started off so well about your chairman.

I think we're all agreed it's a completely rubbish idea for [uany[/u chairman to be placed in charge of the sport due to the inherent and massive conflict of interest it would create. Considering the development of strong academy systems would be amongst the most vital elements of any sport's strategy, what bank of evidence do you have in this area at Rovers to support Hudgell's appointment?

Michael crocker?

Agree,and then mrs B came along,and you feel obliged to try and put her right,before the samaritans ring her.

We've made some poor signings. But they don't all work out - McKinnon, Holdsworth and Galea, if we're doing that dance.
While the RFL's independent assessments are one of the issues that can be filed under 'lack of trust' in the system (especially if they're bad for your own club

), there's certainly room and need for improvement at Rovers. That's probably been the lesson of the last 2 years, and of giving our kids more of a run - too many weren't quite ready or good enough. The RFL's metrics are neither here nor there, IMO. We need to find more talent - Briscoe, Watts and Lineham are all good adverts for spreading the net a bit wider - and develop it better, no doubt. Even more so with Pearson clearly keen to cut us out of the picture, the dastard!


Bradford got a good rating, I notice, with credit for 'continued' investment and staff supported in their mission by the board of directors. The RFL's own regional academies are all uniformly rated as good by the independent assessor, who I believe is available if the contract is available again in 2014.

Corrected my annoying autocorrect. Twice.

Never came over let but just in the spirit of banter I'll re raise you with Tony Lying Larvin ... Still tickles me does that one . By the way has he left his parents house since his big claims ??

Tony larvin trumps allcomers,what a tool,but at least hudgell had his doubts and in the end handled it pretty well.

Mike Smith personally accompanied him to games around the HDM double page spreads time, right? As well as there being the public shows of palliness with Smith and various Rovers club employees around the dartboard #robinsrevolution. Marvellous.

I never said they all worked out, did I? Nor for that matter denied that Rovers have made some great signings like Dobson, Paea and Blake Green. My point was a relatively simple one. For all the manifold

emoticons by your honourable "friend", we hold all the bragging rights at present. All of them, as detailed in my post about 2013 results, points, players and academy. Expanding on the latter, it cannot be argued there is any evidence that Hudgell has prioritised, at any point in the last 10 years, the development of a robust academy to yield a consistent pipeline of players. Money's been spent on other things, for sure, but the harsh reality is that nearly a decade in, apart from Welham, who's what, 27?, there's only Cox who might get in the first choice 13. In the meantime, the choice continues to be the likes of Langley, Gleeson, Maki over investing enough to make a real step change in academy delivery. No doubt we'll get the jam tomorrow commentary, but 2 years ago, Bell and Heil were the next big things and here we are. Groundhog Day. It's nice for us to be in a position of relative strength in this area, particularly as Hudgell promised on promotion that "Soon all the good Hull lads will want to play for Rovers". If he'd elaborated with"all the good Hull lads called Krissy" he might have been right.

Everybody's favourite hedge-fund manager.



It was such a inept performance that were times I thought he must, counter-intuitively, be for real. Because if you're serving up testes for tea, you'd try to present them nicely at least, surely?

Ahh, but don't the years flick round quickly?

I know what you mean. It's less than a year though, since him and Mike Smith car-shared to Gateshead. Would have loved to have been on that road trip.