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.

5 years of SL rugby really?
Are you from the future?
Oh and as for the rest of your post we are doing nothing that others yourselves included have done in the past.
I did kinda mention that if you bothered to look at my post instead of going rabid!

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!!

I said you are going into your fifth season - we're nearly at the end of the fourth. You were looking for a comment, hence you bumping the thread. If you want some homegrown kudos, try Castleford, promoted in 2008, for whom Owen, Shenton, Huby, Westerman played 100 games between them in 2009, an average of 25 games each.

Would that be the same Cas that had a couple of gap years out of SL when those players had origionally signed junior forms for what was then a SL club?
As opposed to over a decade of lower league rugby?
Yeah thats the same!!