How many british players who otherwise would have been at HKR did Crusaders take out of the player pool?

They would need to start and actually give them a shot for them to continue to do so.

Between them they played 28 games last season.

Thats just pathetically disingenuous and you know it.

Not at all. I can see FC's faults and am big enough to discuss them without the need for knee-jerk and myopic defence of things that are patently not right. We are 3 over the quota numbers agreed in 2007 and this is disappointing. You are 6 over and either don't care or feel some strange need to defend it as an irrelevance. That's the difference between us, I suppose. By your logic I guess, Widnes should have 15 overseas players. Guess what? They have less than Rovers. Oh dear.

Agreed.

I will forgive you as you won't have seen I'Anson play much, but our coaching staff were right out of turd polish, hence his release. Interesting that Widnes had a similar stock out of the same item.

Not forgetting of course that this is the same I'Anson who was dumped by his previous club following a serious leg injury and after not really being given a fair crack at a first team spot who we than magnanimously picked up and gave a fair crack at Super League to.

Which team was that?

Leeds.

Same team that Scott Murrell was at.

I omitted that bit Sands, but then again, I'm not going to even attempt to knock Leeds junior pathway, its something we should aspire towards.

It does help if you have the resources to hoover up any and pretty much every promising junior in the country.

The fact HKR were needing to ‘polish a turd’ in I’anson is HKR’s fault.

To borrow a joke from physics - that argument only works for a spherical Hull KR in a vacuum. We'd still be in the second tier if we'd have invested in youth instead of the first team.





What has left us so far behind Australia is the size of the sport here compared to there. We're so far [iahead[/i of France for a similar reason. It's unpalatable, but there are no silver-bullets that will significantly change the balance - it's were it is for some very good and, frankly, obvious reasons. Now that isn't to say we shouldn't try - but denial and fantasy, while making a lovely comfort blanket, are not helpful.



Yep. Even I think the implementation of the non-fed rule has become a joke. The new Crusaders and Heremaia/Dobson dispensations have given us 3 extra overseas players, and I can't make that argument with a straight face anymore. It's not my job or investment on the line, but as an established SL club, I think we should have gone into 2012 with a couple fewer. I think there is some value in the non-fed rule, but for rather different reasons to you.



We've been lucky. We've benefitted more than most. Sometimes life deals you a decent hand. It has helped make Rovers a mid-ranking SL club very quickly. I'm a club-first parochialist... but England RL was not significantly harmed in the making of this movie. These threads are small price to pay.



The extent to which [ithe club[/i has [isought[/i dispensations is exaggerated, IMO. Lovegrove, fair enough. But nobody will complain if fellow British passport holders Laurence Pearce and George Griffin get dispensations, I assume. Mason's dispensation was necessary because Tonga had a nervous breakdown, but let's count that too. The rest were universal. Now, we haven't run away from them either, but I see no shame in playing a good hand.
Just for clarification - you'd be happy to go with the 5 overseas players you list, even while other clubs benefit from the dispensations, as a moral 'stand', despite the likely sporting and economic consequences? Or only if all SL clubs reduce to 5, something that would probably be of relative benefit to Hull FC?





Sorry - call me cynical.

Neither Scott Murrell, I’anson weren’t given a shot because of overseas players, neither could get in to the side and neither got a shot because they weren’t the best young british player at the club. You cant criticise a club for having more young british players than they can accommodate and use it as a defence of a club which doesn’t have enough.

Aye.

Benefit of being a big club - in the salary cap era, I think it is fair enough.

Maybe, maybe not. But a lot is expected from you at elite level including youth development, if you cant do both then you don’t deserve a spot at the top table


There is only one, and will only ever be one option for us to catch up. Produce better players. It is part of the solution for almost all our problems. We would have a better game, more exposure, more fans, more sponsors, we would have a bigger international game. Producing youth is the start of the virtuous cycle towards growth. Without doing it, we cant start.


Every club should be going in with a couple less. Those at the top of the game should be embarrassed by the clubs desperation to avoid their responsibilities to developing the next generation, and those who have failed so massively to get to where they promised they should be should hang their heads.