Mr. K can be peed off all he likes, and yes Leeds realised the importance of junior development years ago and appointed Dean Bell to kick it off then Wigan swiftly followed and Bell was poached by Wigan.
The ever so evil licensing system was part brought in to make clubs find and bring on quality young British players and turn them into professionals, as far as I recall we've had six or seven years of that. Look at the 220 GB players in Superleague 45 come from Leeds and wigan and 69 from overseas.
Other clubs can't find enough quality junior "material" at least so far. "Material" is a bad word but so is the word "develop". You can't develop a player into a quality pro without him having adequate basic talent unless I'm missing something.
And so it comes to pass such as Wakefield academy win the academy championship and it doesn't translate into anything, you'll only find a couple of quality Wakefield born players in SL.
The salary cap is supposed to even this out, problem one is several clubs can't afford the cap so those spending less like HKR, Cas, Salford etc lose their best young players to the big boys who already have the best. problem two is if any club finds a rich buyer like Mr. O'Connor, when he looks on the market for a player to buy there's hardly any to buy because of the talent shortage. Ken Davey's been at the front of the also rans queue for a decade or more now.
Problem three is when Ellis, Taylor, Fisher, Moon etc become available all things are even amongst the clubs with the money but who do they choose to go to?? Widnes? London? No chance. We know that once the money is pretty even the available top players want to go where the trophies are and will take less money to go there, and that perpetuates things.
You then get nonsenses like these campaigns for SL from clubs who don't even have the money the failing SL clubs have. Then you get HKR's Tony Larvin pledging to spend £15M on top players. Which top players from where? The assumption that you have money means you can buy a quality team isn't there due to the player shortage, as for those who don't have money, they are clearly dreaming.
So Mr.K can suit himself but he knows that to improve anything you have got to work out what's wrong with it.
Mo (idiot 1) recognised the lack of resources including players, so did the RFL (Idiots 2) so Mo looked to spreading the game outside the north (laughs all round), and the RFL have been busy in Barcelona, France, Gateshead, South and north Wales, London, and opening an academy in Cumbria. Then oxford, gloucester etc etc and even looked to Scotland and Ireland.
But of course a widely held opinion on here is they are idiots and it'll never work. Well it just might not be working up here either.
Don't forget St Helens in your development hall of fame.
Don't also forget your constant refrain, "Money, money, money". On the one hand clubs, even Leeds and on a good day Wigan, have to be under the salary cap, so they can't just sign uo everybody in sight. Remember they can't afford to do so now and are having to send the residue to Hunslet, South Wales or Rochdale.
Also on the money front, if other clubs get big investors, as say Salford or Hull KR appear to be doing, and they cannot spend beyond the salary cap and in any case the players are not there to be signed, what is to prvent them from approaching promising juniors and offering them more than Leeds or Wigan to sign for their clubs. or to set up development officers in say Salford and Manchester and found junior teams to tap the undoubted potential of such a large population area and develop their own talent. Leeds did, Wigan did.
Even Huddersfield, who you relegate to second tier status in the player development field have half a dozen England players, whom they have developed through their junior ranks or poached from the big boys like Robinson from Wigan.
Hull are the next to produce talent but have only just seriously gone in that direction. let' see if persons money talks there.
Widnes are new to the scene. Their juniors apparently have a lot of promise but are not ready yet. Time will tell if the O'Connor money brings the required success. If they do then O'Connor's money will be instrumental in keeping them at Widnes and away from the big boys. MONEY,MONEY,MONEY.
Leeds and Wigan do not have a lock on any non heartland produced players from London, the midlands, the north east Scotland, Ireland and Wales or even France not to mention PNG, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa etc. Any club with the money can recruit from all these sources as well as developing their own juniors and can catch up with the front runners. Those who do not have the resources will have to be more creative, have a better scouting and coaching set up and produce good teams as and when they can. As you know it's all about MONEY. Sheffield, in the CC, are an example of how to find a winning team by scouting, recuruitment and coaching.
As for Mo, give over. How many SL players are from Barcelona or Paris or even Ireland and Scotland. Cumbroa has been producing players incer year dot and Mo had nothing to do with it. Mo was long gome before there was any movement in Wales. All players from all areas are howver able to be signed by any team with MONEY.
The RFL jumped on the small vehicle ignited by Lionel Hirst when he founded the summer conference, saw the potential and took advantage of Govt. grants to promote it to the size it is today.Kudos to them for seeing the opportunity presented to them ny Hirst. I reiterate however, that any players produced from these area are up fro grabs by the teams with the most MONEY.
The new CC1 expansion teams are embryonic and who knows if they will even survive but if the intention in expanding to these areas was ultimately only in order to produce extra players for SL and not to ultimately expand the geographical footprint on the game, including SL, then that is sad but not surprising. It also flies in the face of the ambitions of your White Knight, Saint Mo.
You should change your user name to Parksider, aka Dr No.
