whithers and lui lui

[DaveO]

cpwigan posted:
The relegation = we cannot develop young players is a red herring.

Go and ask any Wakefield director and they will openly admit otherwise.

Their cheif exec is on record to their own fans as saying they bring in ready made players from overseas because they can't risk developing their own players due to relegation.

Their focus is first and foremost on avoiding relegation and they see the best way to do that by signing Kolpack players as opposed to giving a youngster a wage and a slot.

The real question is comparative cost / quality. As it stands it is cheaper and more cost effective to buy an overseas player. Two factors contribute to that problem; salary cap with no encouragement to develop home grown talent and poor player development from juniors upwards due to a lack of investment (time, expertise, money)

Well its cheaper to pay a Kolpak player his salary than spend the moeny on bringing on a young player for five years rhat is for sure.

Dave

[DaveO]

cpwigan posted:
Geoff seriously that's just bull put out by the coaches. These so called youngsters simply are not good enough. the system in place to produce youngsters is poor. Cas gave lots of these youngsters a seson in Division 1, at the start of this season when free from relegation worrys (likewise every other club) Terry Matterson and Castleford chose not to play youngsters. They had Huby, they grabbed Sculthorpe, they grabbed Ward. Cas made that decision with no real threat. Had Cas been exempt from relegation they would have done exactly the same.

You can't say that for sure. If a team is going to finish bottom and there is no relegation that team can if it wishes give run outs to its developing players in games.

There is no such option for sides who have to avoid relegation. The reason Cas went looking for the likes of Ward is they had no alternative but to try and get some experienced players on board to try and avoid relgation. Without relegation they would not have been frantically searching for a half back come the seasons end.

And of course do you think we would have signed Wilkes and Co if relegation were not an issue?

What motivated those signings when we have young players who could be rotated in their positions?

We may also not have broken the salary cap last season. With Lockers and Hock out the club felt compelled to sign Botham and others to cover. It did this to avoid relegation and for no other reason. It went for players with more experience rather than leave the future of the club in the hands of young players.

Wakefield. They have no youngsters. They do not invest in young players. They have had to cancel academy matches this season.

And whay is that? Because their policy is to spend their allowance under the cap on overseas players to avoid relegation.

Dave

[cpwigan]

I cannot help but think you are both naive and I do not mean that insultingly.

Relegation or no relegation, coaches get sacked. The Australian Test Coach, the most most successful Roosters coach in 20 odd years got the boot despite no relegation. You could go on and on with examples in the NRL. The turnover of coaches / players is no different to SL. Why does that matter?

I can tell you now and if you look at this with your eyes fully open. No chairman, coach and even maybe supporters of Wakefield, Castleford or whomever are going to wait until a 3 or 5 year plan develops. That is a facet of sport that has always been so. Rightly/wrongly. Sport is perceived in the short term. Unless you achieve instant credibility then no matter what is sometimes promised, pressure mounts and somebody gets fired. That somebody is always the coach. No coach is going to play roulette with his own job.

[cpwigan]

The NRL invested time/effort/money in youth development BEFORE introducing a salary cap. That meant they had a supply of talent that would by and large suffice for the whole competition incl expansion. So you get a cycle. A club is successful, salaries/bonuses rise. They have to be very astute re recruitment / retention or their team ages. The lower teams can all pick up youngsters that are quality and ready to mature far faster than our youngsters because they have been better trained and already exposed to much more competition. An English Michael Dobson does not exist. So in SL your left with no investment in youth development, a scarce supply of young talent that is insufficient to feed more than 2 or 3 clubs at best. What is the option? Overseas players.

[cpwigan]

If we take the notion that no relegation would allow youngsters to come through then why did it not happen at Catalan? Overseas recruitment is a big factor for them. They tend to only take established French players. Stacey Jones got injured, they sought a replacement in Australia (Dobson) not in their reserves.

[cpwigan]

Honestly, all the rhetoric we read is just that. It is excuses and embarassment for a lack of British born players and failure to win matches. People are looking for answers and they cannot find them or do not wish to admit that there is a real problem.

Youth development is poor but it's poor from U7s upwards. The professional game, the RFL / BARLA have not invested sufficiently in its very lifeblood and they are now paying the price as they have for the last 30 years.

So remedial measures are required. No U23s produced by that club / even better from that service area are counted on the Cap. Sources of additional external British recruitment do not count on the cap. We can go after Union players, let's bloody well turn the tables on them. Whilst doing that put some god damn time/effort/money into developing a youth development programme. Without doing that anthing/everything else is papering over the cracks.

Hence why i am against the Wales folly. We have not got it right on our own doorstep so what the hell are we doing chasing rainbows!

[ChrisA]

Simple fact is that there are very few genuinly talented young players coming through. The game is angled differently and teaches young players different things nowadays. The game is is all about possesion and percentage rugby. We are turning out robots who all look and play the same style with little or no variation to their game. The only player we have seen to brake out of this mold is Ashton, the only other player who comes close is Luke Robinson, but he was released for reasons other than playing ability.

Genuinly talented young players make there way through if they really are good enough. It makes it look like we are stifling the young players, when the real reason is that 95% of the young players just aren't good enough, and never will be

I worry in some ways, because there is no evidence of a modern day Billy Boston, Martin Offiah, Ellery Hanley, Joe Lydon, Alex Murphy or Andy Gregory coming through at any club in the league. The game doesn't seem to produce genuine talent, match winners who can do something freakish, can turn a game on it's head by doing something unexpected.

The reason that there's very little talent coming through the youth system is literally that, there is very little genuine talent, we just see the same players of the same standard playing the same percentage rugby every year. The name's change, but the quality stays the same, and for the best part it's all pretty much average.

[WiganWarrior]

Noble on boots n all tonight was questioned on these signings and said it was all speculation and there is players he wants to bring in but this would be unfortunatly at the expense of others. He said nothing official has come from him and they have some contracts to tie up first

[cpwigan]

A further change

Relegated clubs have to slash wages from £1.7m to around £400,000. They have to rip up any good work of the last 12 months and start again from scratch -

Give the relegated club a 12 month option of operating at the SL salary cap.

Personally, I see no problem having 14 clubs in SL.

[DaveO]

cpwigan posted:
I cannot help but think you are both naive and I do not mean that insultingly.

Relegation or no relegation, coaches get sacked. The Australian Test Coach, the most most successful Roosters coach in 20 odd years got the boot despite no relegation. You could go on and on with examples in the NRL. The turnover of coaches / players is no different to SL. Why does that matter?

What has that got to do with player development? Of course Millward was sacked because we were rubbish and things (as we now know) were less than good off-field but the issue is player recruitment and player recruitment is driven by the need to avoid relegation.

I can tell you now and if you look at this with your eyes fully open. No chairman, coach and even maybe supporters of Wakefield, Castleford or whomever are going to wait until a 3 or 5 year plan develops. That is a facet of sport that has always been so. Rightly/wrongly. Sport is perceived in the short term. Unless you achieve instant credibility then no matter what is sometimes promised, pressure mounts and somebody gets fired. That somebody is always the coach. No coach is going to play roulette with his own job.

I think you are living in the past. Players like Dobson are being developed by his Aussie club. They let him out on loan and now they have him back. He isn't going to walk into the team down under but will be nurtured and he knows whatever happens in the NRL to his club he is not going to get cut from the squad in favour of a 30 year old foreign player.

The simple fact is Wigan never mond Wakefield have made panic signings in the last two seasons in order to stave off relegation.

Without relegation we would neve rhave seen thee likes of Wilkes at this club.

Dave