Quote: Barnabus "I'm not sure that players like Maki, Paniu, Larroyer, Talanoa, Feka, Costigan, Miller etc etc improve the standard of SL. Some, like Paea & Weyman do. I'm not advocating getting rid of foreign players, just stop signing the crap ones and invest that money longer term in youth development.'"
But you've still got to pay senior pros to play first team. Against the likes of Talanoa and Maki, you're unlikely to be saving much to spend on the kids. Though I agree, clubs could maybe be a bit more ready to look at the Championship, the possibility that they don't more often is for good reasons has to be considered. Firstly, is the talent there in the amounts we like to assume? And secondly, is that much of it likely to be that keen to train full-time when in many cases they wouldn't be that much better off and it might damage their prospects in their other job/career?
If the RFL wants more spending on development, it needs to ring-fence more of it for that, one way or another. It's very hard to make a self-interest case to most of the clubs for spending big on junior development at the expense of the first team.
