Widnes Give Up

[dead man inc]

57 minutes ago, paulwalker71 said:

Hard to disagree with that, really, and this is the ‘problem’ we have at Bradford. For the past few years we’ve seen all our best Academy products picked off by SL teams one-by-one

It’s hard to blame the players as the ambition has to be to play at the top level - but if it isn’t going to be with the Bulls, why are we putting in all the work, effort and money?

The issue to me is not that the best academy products get picked off by the best SL teams (i agree with you the players ambition has to be at the top level) it’s the financial cost the host team has put into the player, to recurve minimal (if any) financial fee when they get cherry picked off,

[yipyee]

7 hours ago, dead man inc said:

The issue to me is not that the best academy products get picked off by the best SL teams (i agree with you the players ambition has to be at the top level) it’s the financial cost the host team has put into the player, to recurve minimal (if any) financial fee when they get cherry picked off,

This is what happens to amateur clubs who develop players from 7 years old though.

I would see payments also going to the amateur club when a player signs a pro contract.

I would make it a rule that a player must sign a pro contract with the club the academy is linked to or pay that club 50% of the players new contract (total value for all the term so if its 3 years 1.5 years) as a fee at the point of signing uncluding 10% to the amateur club.

[TrueBull]

Has it always been SL that set up academies? Have the RFL not been involved in the past? 
SL control the matched funding. What’s to stop a championship club setting up an academy without funding and getting approval from the RFL?

[Spidey]

15 minutes ago, TrueBull said:

Has it always been SL that set up academies? Have the RFL not been involved in the past? 
SL control the matched funding. What’s to stop a championship club setting up an academy without funding and getting approval from the RFL?

RFL run the academies not SL

[JonM]

9 hours ago, yipyee said:

All the best players from Widnes end up at saints or warrington so no major loss to the sport.

Its their involvement with the cumbria academy thats a blow.

First part is definitely not true. Leeds had three ex-Widnes Academy players in their first team this year. I don't think Saints had any (Lewis Dodd is from Widnes, but signed for Saints academy at 14 or so). I would think Salford & Leigh are probably the biggest beneficiaries of other clubs academies overall though.

Widnes running Cumbria academy stopped in 2019.

[Oxford]

8 minutes ago, JonM said:

I would think Salford & Leigh are probably the biggest beneficiaries of other clubs academies overall though.

Jon I'm fascinated by this idea and although I don't doubt it at all, is there evidence to back this up?

I hope you're correct by the way because I've only seen negatives from the situation up to now.

[The Blues Ox]

10 hours ago, paulwalker71 said:

Hard to disagree with that, really, and this is the ‘problem’ we have at Bradford. For the past few years we’ve seen all our best Academy products picked off by SL teams one-by-one

It’s hard to blame the players as the ambition has to be to play at the top level - but if it isn’t going to be with the Bulls, why are we putting in all the work, effort and money?

We had the same when we dropped out of SL. Once it happens you just become easy pickings for the SL teams and have little chance of signing players from community clubs ahead of SL teams. Its a waste of time and money really.

In my opinion Im sure some sort of system could be worked out where elite youth players could be signed for SL teams and then be filtered to their local championship teams in partnership with their SL team who will still asist with their development. This would be under a contract with the Championship team rather than the current mess that is DR. Too many players are taken by SL teams when they know full well only a very small percentage will make it while most will then be lost to the semi pro game where as doing it like this will give a lot more of them a future in my opinion.

[JonM]

6 minutes ago, Oxford said:

Jon I'm fascinated by this idea and although I don't doubt it at all, is there evidence to back this up?

I hope you're correct by the way because I've only seen negatives from the situation up to now.

Evidence would be to go through the Salford or Leigh squads and count up how many are products of other club's academies, should you wish to do that. Now that Salford are running their own academy programme, that will change - Connor Aspey hopefully being the first of many.

I certainly wouldn't see any positives in Widnes not running an academy - other than the fact that cutting costs keeps the club alive. The 2019 Widnes squad were mostly academy products. As pretty much all of the current board have a background in schools and amateur rugby league (Roger Harrison got his MBE for services to schools RL), I imagine this decision was a tough one to take.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that spending money on the stadium, community programmes and on the academy has been the wrong strategy for some years - better to spend that money on players for the first team.

[The Future is League]

In a nutshell, for the foreseeable future Widnes have given up on any hopes of returning to Super League

[DoubleD]

12 hours ago, Gooleboy said:

What are they doing now?

Sadly most the players have had to return to part time status this year, although Ellis Robson secured a FT deal with Warrington (and rightly so, he’s a talent)

[Harry Stottle]

18 hours ago, nadera78 said:

Frankly, an academy in Leigh would be a waste of resources because it wouldn't produce any additional players. It might mean players come through that academy rather than those of Wigan or St Helens, but they wouldn't be additional players.

There are Leigh Lads at each of our 3 SL neighbour's, it is up to Derek Beaumont to devise a way of louring them to their 'hometown' club. 

Local lads have not for a few years had the oppurtunity to go to a SL academy in their own town, one being available could make a huge amount of difference, being that lads are natives of the town, play their amateur football in the town, the more the likelihood is that they are fans of towns pro club, it is up to the officer's of that club to keep them their, putting some time and effort from an early age of these kids will be money well spent, if there is to be a rule that player's are to be sourced from non-heartland areas every local one will be a much more cost effective option.

Quite agree with you that the local pool of juniors would be divided up further still, but if it does become a condition of SL participation to have an academy what should the Leigh club do?

The Future is League, will surely agree with this, won't he?

[tms]

2 hours ago, TrueBull said:

Has it always been SL that set up academies? Have the RFL not been involved in the past? 
SL control the matched funding. What’s to stop a championship club setting up an academy without funding and getting approval from the RFL?

THE RFL

 when academies were self funding  FEV ran a successful junior set up but when RFL started to fund SL academies  champ teams told to stop the computer said NO   on at least three occasions FEV have applied to run an academy  with a local business man prepared to give them the same funding as SL clubs but  the computer still said NO 

[Tommygilf]

27 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

if it does become a condition of SL participation to have an academy what should the Leigh club do?

Invest a lot of money

[Harry Stottle]

18 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

I think the point being made or at least suggested in the OP article is that 'cast offs' won't be good enough for approval. Yes Widnes' academy did produce players for the first team, but Widnes didn't come close to winning anything or have a system that could protect them from relegation either and now ultimately they are dropping it. Of course it will bring through some good players as Bradford and London's have for example, but its clear from the OP that Super League want those players to be in a high quality academy environment not "who's left RLFC".

As I see it an academy should be one of the clubs major points of investment, especially if you are a top division (aspiring) club that cannot command large wages/transfer fees.

As we spoke about not to long ago Tommy, and I consider it to be substansiated in your first paragraph when you say "Cast off's won't be good enough for approval" folowed by "Widnes didn't come close to winning anything, or save them from relegation" I intimated that there maybe some type of demarcation area/zone/system that spreads out the availbe talent out far further than 3 or 4 clubs, if we want more clubs to be successful through there academies or even avoid relegation because of it (but some club will suffer that fate) then the authorities shoukd really do something about it.

I know nothing at all about other sports, but I am aware that in sone American sports they have a draught system, was that brought in to stop the top clubs hoovering up all the best available talent? Just asking.

[DoubleD]

36 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

There are Leigh Lads at each of our 3 SL neighbour's, it is up to Derek Beaumont to devise a way of louring them to their 'hometown' club. 

Local lads have not for a few years had the oppurtunity to go to a SL academy in their own town, one being available could make a huge amount of difference, being that lads are natives of the town, play their amateur football in the town, the more the likelihood is that they are fans of towns pro club, it is up to the officer's of that club to keep them their, putting some time and effort from an early age of these kids will be money well spent, if there is to be a rule that player's are to be sourced from non-heartland areas every local one will be a much more cost effective option.

Quite agree with you that the local pool of juniors would be divided up further still, but if it does become a condition of SL participation to have an academy what should the Leigh club do?

The Future is League, will surely agree with this, won't he?

Oh the old chestnut of locals only want to play for their local team nonsense again

[TrueBull]

15 minutes ago, POR said:

THE RFL

 when academies were self funding  FEV ran a successful junior set up but when RFL started to fund SL academies  champ teams told to stop the computer said NO   on at least three occasions FEV have applied to run an academy  with a local business man prepared to give them the same funding as SL clubs but  the computer still said NO 

This is the bit I don’t understand. The RFL license and supervise and do regular appraisals for academies. The money for the academies is from the RFl, but they get it from their share of the SL sky money. So they are assessing that the £100k funding is value for money. If a club doesn’t want the funding, why can’t they run their own academy? Is it purely because of perceived congestion? 

[Harry Stottle]

3 minutes ago, DoubleD said:

Oh the old chestnut of locals only want to play for their local team nonsense again

Don't be so facetious, I didn't say that at all, it was all about louring local kids to sign for their home town club and using everything at the clubs disposal to effect that, if psychology helps use it.

[Harry Stottle]

9 minutes ago, TrueBull said:

This is the bit I don’t understand. The RFL license and supervise and do regular appraisals for academies. The money for the academies is from the RFl, but they get it from their share of the SL sky money. So they are assessing that the £100k funding is value for money. If a club doesn’t want the funding, why can’t they run their own academy? Is it purely because of perceived congestion? 

Very good point.

[Scotchy1]

1 minute ago, Harry Stottle said:

Don't be so facetious, I didn't say that at all, it was all about louring local kids to sign for their home town club and using everything at the clubs disposal to effect that, if psychology helps use it.

And what good does that do for the game?

[Tommygilf]

3 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

As we spoke about not to long ago Tommy, and I consider it to be substansiated in your first paragraph when you say "Cast off's won't be good enough for approval" folowed by "Widnes didn't come close to winning anything, or save them from relegation" I intimated that there maybe some type of demarcation area/zone/system that spreads out the availbe talent out far further than 3 or 4 clubs, if we want more clubs to be successful through there academies or even avoid relegation because of it (but some club will suffer that fate) then the authorities shoukd really do something about it.

I know nothing at all about other sports, but I am aware that in sone American sports they have a draught system, was that brought in to stop the top clubs hoovering up all the best available talent? Just asking.

That's fantastic Harry as long as you are happy with the players aspiring to the top professional and academy teams going to play in their "demarcated" areas. I'm sure St Pats, Orrell and St Judes will love that!

Clubs like Huddersfield and Warrington have shown it is absolutely possible to invest in and grow an academy that can challenge at the top. What is impossible is to compete with the top teams on the cheap, which demarcation areas are effectively an example of too. Just like for the first team you can't do it on the cheap and expect to have solid foundations. Especially when the big teams continue to invest in their academies.

The draft system exists in American football because they have a school/college system rather than amateur clubs and then academies to develop players, and teams in any case are franchises liable to move or not be in an area blessed with loads of local talent. If anything its to stop clubs in "heartland" areas totally dominating!

[Davo5]

12 hours ago, yipyee said:

All the best players from Widnes end up at saints or warrington so no major loss to the sport.

Its their involvement with the cumbria academy thats a blow.

 

There only involvement with the Cumbrian academy was to strip it then discard it,so no real loss in that aspect.

[Harry Stottle]

1 hour ago, Tommygilf said:

That's fantastic Harry as long as you are happy with the players aspiring to the top professional and academy teams going to play in their "demarcated" areas. I'm sure St Pats, Orrell and St Judes will love that!

Clubs like Huddersfield and Warrington have shown it is absolutely possible to invest in and grow an academy that can challenge at the top. What is impossible is to compete with the top teams on the cheap, which demarcation areas are effectively an example of too. Just like for the first team you can't do it on the cheap and expect to have solid foundations. Especially when the big teams continue to invest in their academies.

The draft system exists in American football because they have a school/college system rather than amateur clubs and then academies to develop players, and teams in any case are franchises liable to move or not be in an area blessed with loads of local talent. If anything its to stop clubs in "heartland" areas totally dominating!

Tommy I gave alternatives of demarcation/zone/system, how very prudent of you just to pick on one and assuming if to be in a locallity of the club!

Wherever these areas or zones could be or even a different system altogether I haven't a clue what could be done, I understand one thing though that fans of those clubs who yeild the biggest vacuum cleaners are in no way willing to upset the present 'open course' they already hunt on.

They already take on more lads than they will ever need, is it to prevent the competition signing them? and they do so full well knowing that they will be ejecting the majority of them, there we go this discussion has led me to an alternative perhaps a different system could be a ceiling on how many a club are allowed to be signed or a squad capacity number or would that be taking the edge away from the top clubs?

[Harry Stottle]

1 minute ago, Harry Stottle said:

The draft system exists in American football because they have a school/college system rather than amateur clubs and then academies to develop players,

Whatever terminology you choose they are the nurseries to produce players, the system you describe works to spread the talent around, here in RL. it clearly doesn't.

[Scotchy1]

Just now, Harry Stottle said:

Whatever terminology you choose they are the nurseries to produce players, the system you describe works to spread the talent around, here in RL. it clearly doesn't.

Clubs get out what they put in. 

Leeds Wigan and Saints have put in the most for decades and as such have structures and pathways that work the best and get the most. Wire and Hudds have had to spend big to try and catch up, havent got there yet but have got closer. Other SL clubs have done less, and get less. 

Some clubs do nothing and get nothing. 

[yipyee]

3 hours ago, JonM said:

First part is definitely not true. Leeds had three ex-Widnes Academy players in their first team this year. I don't think Saints had any (Lewis Dodd is from Widnes, but signed for Saints academy at 14 or so). I would think Salford & Leigh are probably the biggest beneficiaries of other clubs academies overall though.

Widnes running Cumbria academy stopped in 2019.

Percivil and the lad who plays at cas..are 2 its true that not every clib shoyld have an academy in a close area