Where does your new half back come from again? your new centre your impact forward? And your new prop?

West hull I assume

Papa lazarou is the greatest comic character of all time

I like the way you went back to edit this and add 'West Hull I assume" to the end of it. Made it loads better.

I could only imagine such bitterness coming from a Hull FC fan unfortunately.

The talent pool is looking ok really.

Plenty of debuts to young kids handed out in the last two years. Going onto clubs to win league and cup doubles

Some going to Australia to ply their trade, some in the championships. Teams above us in the table signing them.

4 promising kids promoted to the full time squad for 2014 alongside the likes of Welham, Cox, Green, Ollett.

Could always do better but then again we could do a lot worse.

In that case, it would be disappointing. Though there's an argument that, up to a point, a better standard helps more than a bigger pool.

But for me, that isn't the [iwhole[/i point at all.

SL is [iprimarily[/i a competition. Development of talent is an important but secondary responsibility - a means more than an end for the clubs.

No bitterness here, I simply view investment into youth/grassroots paying greater future dividends (Mrs B will like that) rather than an 'investment' in foreign no-marks, no matter which club it is. Some players come to SL and enrich the competition, most add nothing and we as a sport are paying for it and have done for years.

Your post above is praising things that should be a given anyway, promoting players, giving debuts etc. That is a fundamental aspect of what any SL club should do and pretty much every club will have done the exact same things you've just proudly written out.

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.

A low turnover of players & you might be able to promote juniors to fill the gaps, a high turnover (as we've had) & you've no choice but to go into the market. The number of overseas players is disappointing but it's just a reflection of what's available domestically.

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.

Larroyer played 17 Super League matches last season scoring a number of tries and Costigan played regularly for Newcastle in the NRL perhaps you should reserve judgement until you have seen them play in 2014. I agree the two PNG players are a gamble but wasn't Stanley Gene?

Quite right, it's about time Catalan were booted out, I can't think of one decent English player to come through their youth system.