What is needed now is an A team or reserve team competition, where these lads can carry on there apprenticeship, because that is what it is , where they can learn of some older pros that have been there done it. I would give Ben Cockayne the A team player coaches job he loves the club and his enthusiasm would be an inspiration to the younger lads. Try and bring in a couple of senior forwards, I know it will be hard to get these guys to join the club in this capacity, but it's as important as having a good head coach in your club. Could even play Dave Hodgson now and again to run his assistant coaches eye over the youngsters actually on the field.

every thing you say is true but why do we not go down the road like Australia I believe that they have all the teams from about 10 yrs old and upwards It works well for them so why cant we if clubs are running now it cant cost that much or they would fold with all clubs been in charge they can keep an eye on the young players and get the first team player help out has well in their free time they get paid enough

The numbers don't add up - that is why it didn't work. It is a nice idea (if not a good one), and shooting it down makes better people than me feel bad, so it didn't get challenged much. But plenty of people could see it, I imagine, and that was why there was very limited buy-in.

Did you read the article I linked to MR?

If Keighley & Fax can manage it, and make it financially viable, I'm sure SL clubs can too. Fawcett quite clearly talks about sponsorship & gate receipts offsetting any additional cost, and that the "numbers not adding up" is a lazy excuse for clubs that can't really be bothered to do it properly.

I completely agree on your point on clubs not putting enough back into the communities. The first block of your reply I don't agree with, it's way over the top for what would be a handful of local lads getting the chance to pull on an FC/KR shirt a few weeks a year.

I'm based in Leeds, playing for an amateur club and I'm on the committee, so I have some insight into how the grassroots game works here at least. The Rhinos have been excellent for us, instrumental in helping us attract new juniors, holding coaching masterclasses & touchline manager courses, sending players & coaches down when we ask etc.

Basically, they're really engaged in driving participation levels up in the area, and in recent years we've gone from two junior sides to nine. That's nearly 100 more kids playing RL that wouldn't have been playing 3/4 years ago. We're seeing this at clubs all over the city too, and they now have 34 affiliated community clubs (Hull as a city I think have around 12?).

From what I understand, neither Hull or Rovers do enough in the city to really drive participation, and that's why I disagree with the merger of the academies. I understood that it was a response to the shallowing of the player pool in Hull, but it was a reactive action, rather than both clubs being proactive to actually address and fix the problem.

With all due respect to Fax and Keighley, they're semi-pro clubs for whom there is potential value in running what I assume is a nearly amateur second team. The step up from amateur to SL is too big in one step, so for super league teams they'd have to run bigger squads with more fringe players, many of whom would be better off at a Championship club, IMO.

The problem is that we see players who go to York or Doncaster from their SL 19s not as stepping up to the senior game, but as dropping down a league. Again IMO.