This may well be true, but the reasons why are obvious. As those contracts come to an end we will see Rovers depth of quality improve compounded by the promotion of real quality talent coming through the youth system. This Rovers side will get stronger and stronger over the next three years.

It is however absurd to ignore how players have performed since being signed. Was it three or four Rovers players in the Dream team last season?

Indeed - we don't get the 'success/reputation discount' that Saints or Leeds, for example, have. When we recruited heavily for the 2008 season, we were trying to attract players to a team that finished 2nd bottom (for all that that represented 'success' in 2007) and had had a long spell out of the top flight before that. As has been acknowledged, we gave out bigger and longer contracts, than we'd have ideally liked to make the squad more competitive. Those signings were considered quite a coup at the time, and they have mostly worked out well.
Partly because it would have been difficult to attract the very biggest names, and partly, I suspect, because Morgan wanted to spread his eggs between a few baskets, we went for very good, rather than great players.
Hull have gone for a different balance, spending big on legendary veterans like Fitzgibbon and Long. On the other hand that is balanced by you having Cusack and Moa taking up quota spots, where we have to use them all for frontline players as we haven't yet built up a depth of club-trained players. O'Meley has been a top signing and is a big name, but his stock down under had dropped pretty dramatically from the reports I saw (as had Clinton's, I know). At 29 he is still not old for a prop and obviously came across hungry and with a point to prove - Those are the best type of signing IMO.

Not true. Because not every single SL club has the same circumstances as Rovers.

There's still this myth around that the Hull side is packed with players who came through the youth system. Not the case at all. Tomorrow we'll probably see briscoe, yeaman, washbrook and houghton, plus radford who doesn't really count and maybe hall. I'd expect rovers won't be much different

But there is an ongoing requirement to play more and more home grown players. By all accounts Rovers has a fair few prospects at under 18. This will necessarily mean over the next two or three years more lower value contracts in the first team squad, thus allowing more of the cap for "star" players.

How many teams are there In SL that don't have "a fair few prospects at under 18"? If these prospects are outstanding, they will be highly attractive to other clubs also as bidding wars for young British players will become more, not less, intensive.

So every club has young prospects coming through, meaning a surfeit of young prospects ergo no bidding war for young players. The players which will be in demand are proven SL quality English players and there will be a premium for these, that is obvious.

Welham, Latus, Taylor, Watts were all on the pitch today, they all showed they were not out of place.

True but don't forget those other home grown lads of ours, Lovegrove & Murrell.

Add to that the strange decision with regard to lovegrove and Murrell I belive which makes a total of 6(?) homegrown players and that still isnt counting Houghton and anymore who may come through next year.
A fair few of us did say it would take a few years to see em coming through and we were roundly laughed at and told we were only playing 'lip service' if I remember the comment correctly.
It seems we were correct after all!!
3 years of SL rugby and 4 genuine homegrown players plus us doing what other clubs have done to boost those numbers not bad eh!!

I seem to have broken this thread as the trolls are nowhere to been seen.
I can only appologise to the Mods.

Nicely spun. Or looking at it another way, going into your 5th season, one genuine homegrown player (Welham), one pinched from the West Riding (Watts), and Latus and Taylor who have about 4 full games between them. Surely enough to earn bonus points in your franchise application.

Oh and 1 more thing.
The team that scores points on franchise criteria arn't an egotistical, rabid FC fan with no life, who has a husband with the balls of peanuts for not telling you to go and love yourself when you mentioned him going to watch FC over rovers.
So we can expect them to stick to the RULES and if the RULES say we get a point then we get a point if they say we dont then we don't but we can safely assume they wont be borrowing you black and white specs!!