people seem to forget hull had the cherrypick of all youngsters for over a decade with us not having reserves or academy for part of that time if we did produce any players they were snapped up striaght away ie jon wilkin even paul fletcher had a lot of chances to go play at a higher level but stayed loyal im quite happy with the way our youth is coming through at the moment and no matter what happens the aussies will still be hammering us in 20 years time so what does it matter

11 out of 25+
Maths and/or english not your strong point then Smokey?

Interesting. I'd heard '6-figure sum' for Rovers, consistent with that.
What i'd be curious about is what would happen if every body started spending half a million. Would the same talent just be spread around the league (ie Leeds and Saints investment is in the acquisition more than the development of players) or would every club have the likes of Jones-Bishop, Foster, Lomax and Gaskell coming through the ranks year after year.




Tbf, and much as it pains me to almost take his side , I guess he means matchday squad. Or 'team' to you and me

HKR planning on putting out a 25 man matchday squad? Its an interesting approach to covering up for their mediocrity and im not sure they will get away with it.

11 out of 17?

Maths and/or english not your strong point then?

I'm going to stop using The Gregorian calender to mark the passing of the years, a more accurate measure is to wait for SmokeyTA to turn up on an annual basis to comment on our recruitment.

Would you really class two player coming through the HKR system to HKR regular in 5 years on schedule? If so its the least ambitious schedule possible. Hell I would have expected a better return from Crusaders than that. I doubt you would be so relaxed about it if a club like Hull FC for instance had found a loophole in the Salary Cap which allowed them to spend huge amounts of extra money which whilst not explicitly against the rules was totally against the reasons the SC existed or they encouraged their players to challenge the legality of the SC in an effort to allow them to spend more. Which in principle would be the same as what HKR and other clubs are doing in regards to the quota.

You were the one who failed to stipulate matchday or full squad.
Maybe you can give that a shot next time.

Its not my fault you made an assumption in your attempt to be a smart and it turned out to be wrong. You could have considered whether or not 11 would be the majority of a squad before jumping in with both feet.

Maybe you can give that a shot next time.

Out of morbid curiosity, which two are you granting us as 'real' in your munificence? 'HKR regular' means you don't want to give us Frankie Mariano, I assume. So that must mean you count Josh Hodgson, which I wouldn't, but fair enough. Who is the other?


Clubs do exploit loopholes in the salary cap - that is hardly a secret. As long as they aren't flat out cheating, I can accept it easily enough. If it was looser still, I'd direct my disappointment at the RFL, rather than Wigan, Warrington or whoever else decided to spend £3m a year or whatever. If they could afford to spend that kind of money via a loophole, I can't imagine them stinting themselves.

mild rover, assuming my maths are correct (even with 'smokeys' abacus) the amount of money I am aware Rovers have invested in youth development is between £200,000-£250,000pa (well, at least over the past 3 years). These are six-figure sums?