it does take time to get an academy up to scratch, but 4 years for 1 player?

and if your academy isnt yet up to scratch, why arent you looking at players in the national leagues or on the fringes of other SL squads rather than Overseas players?

In the last 2/3 seasons we have signed or promoted several English Players including 2 who are now internationals since their move, we have given a young Saints Fullback (Hardman) and a Young Wigan winger/centre oppertunities in the Top Flight in which they would probably never of had at their respective clubs.
Do you think Scott Murrell would now be a full time SL Player with Leeds if we had not snapped him up and i never saw Cas coming in for Cockayne who is a home town lad to give him his chance, love him or hate him he is a fantastic SL Utility player for us.
Its not quite as straight forward as you all think but hey your entitled to your oppinion.

To be fair to Hull Kingston Australians...they are faced with a chicken v the egg scenario. With a bigger, better supported, financially stronger and more recently successful club on their doorstep, the need to be competative on the pitch if they are to ever catch up...and therefore they will employ whomever the RFL will let them.
It is the ultimate case of trying to keep up with the jonses

Gaela and Webster are really good, not as good as Dobson though. Newton, Vella and Clinton are not all that. Mason is not yours yet, hope he does do well though I fear he'll take early retirement. I'm surprised dobson hasn't decided to head back to the NRL, maybe he realises he's in a better comp in SL?

To what end? So that we could also do Harlequins sack cloth and ashes routine of "we're but look how many English players we've got?

Signing English players would not have improved Rovers' academy at all, simply weakened the first team with the likely result that they would not now be in SL or they would not have finished in the playoffs for the last two years and then I expect you would be the first one to complain of on field mediocrity and not contributing to the competition.

I think that Rovers board and coach have a bit better idea than you Smokey and am very happy with the way they are running the club. I just think it galls you that the club you love to hate is doing so well.

God you talk rubbish so when we was promoted we were to have a academy team full of superstars ready for super league then I'm afraid years in the shadow of our merged neighbours has seen all talent go west or to another team but now were back in the big time that talent is slowly making it's way back east but let's be fair we can't instantly be competative straight away so we need these players that we have to enable us to do so other wise we would end up like quins fighting for the wooden spoon every year maybe we are bending the rules but what club in sl don't example teams like Leeds and Warrington must be braking the salary cap but have probably done deals in contracts so that doesn't happen

and breath

give me a play off team with 10 foreigners over a non playoff team with 7 any day of the week!

This I like.

Its bettter than the Hull KR 'we have a shed load of debt, but we have a mid-table side made of ageing or unproven 2nd tier Australians, hey Mr Council build us a new stand please@
they are mediocre on the field, but they would have contributed a whole heap more had they brought in young british players.

And again, if your club was good at scouting, coaching, developing players it wouldnt weaken the first team. There are players just as good as some of the dross you have signed, you simply havent gone out and found them because you arent good at scouting, developing and coaching so you ride on the coat-tails of the NRL
of course you are, however in three years when they are behind every other club because they are trying to start doing what everybody else has been doing for the past 3 years it will be quite funny to watch you squirm. Your short-termism will bite you on the ass. Also doing so well? with your overseas dispensation and you are only qualifying for the play-offs, bit unambitious really.

exactly, so what motivation does any team have to have only 7, why dont they all go out and get 10,

and when 8 clubs have 10 better overseas players than you are going to get 11? and so on until we only have overseas players because no-one wants to bother with long-term player development because the short-term results can be acheived? and then when the standard of the league crashes because we are no longer bringing through the best british players what do we do? employ more overseas players?

YAWN

Shows what you know!

The level of debt is not a problem to Hull KR fans nor the directors that financially support the club (in exactly the same way that most other clubs are financially supported by their directors to a greater or lesser degree)



Ah, so if you were the head coach of a club in your first season of SL (with P & R still the process for staying in or being removed from SL) your first signings would not be experienced players with a proven level of ability (either British or Aussie) but inexperienced, young British players.

The absurdity of the standards you seem to expect from Hull KR just get worse Smokey.

The rules by which all SL clubs operate are not determined by Hull KR.



Perhaps your ire would be better directed at the RFL.

Ah, you go round in circles with him mate. He's obviously just got an axe to grind because he's not in the slightest bit interested by the investment and work that has gone into our youth development and scouting in recent years.

Apparently the moment we arrived in SL we should have snapped up all the unknown SL standard players that are available from the lower leagues and scouted and signed all the top youngsters in the country (those so good they'd be ready for SL by now, yet not attached to any other club at the age of 17/18

). All this despite the fact its the very lack of those very players that meant the RFL had to think long and hard about expanding to a 14 club SL.

If we did as he wants and play the likes of I'Anson and Spavin every week, he'd pull us up on something like 'not contributing to the competition'. You can't win against stubborn ignorance.

then you should have no issue with making the contribution to the development of british players as befits an SL club do you


that was 4 years ago, the fact Hull KR may have needed to bring in overseas players to try and stay in the league years ago doesnt influence signing a 23 year old NRL reserve grader for next year at all.

and that is relevant to what i put because?

If hull kr cant run themselves in a sustainable way with the RFL needing to prescriptively legislate for them then they dont deserve a place in SL

where is it then? where are the 18 year olds you were scouting 3 years ago? where are the lower league players you have attempted to polish into an SL player? If you are doing it rather than paying lip-service where are the results?


no i wouldnt, im more than comfortable, and in fact would positively encourage long term development of young players, if 10 years down the line you still havent progressed then that would be something to look at, but it would be more than happy to see the lower clubs like yours follow the lead of Quins and Castleford and put your trust in the youngsters, and when adding to the squad looking at british players rather than NRL reserve graders

The funny thing is I actually agree with you in parts. We do and will next year have too many overseas players for my liking. I like Green, he's a good player and as a Rovers fan, I will support him, but if we could have got a decent English halfback (Ratchford maybe, or Matty Smith would've been nice), I'd have probably preferred it. Problem is, anyone anywhere near this level is in great demand, and despite what you say, there are not many of them available.

The only way a fully functioning academy and youth setup can work is signing players under 15 and (as you say) developing and coaching them into SL players. Considering we've only had that for less than 4 years, what we could first grab hold of back then are only just turning 18/19 now. AND that was a setup in its infancy competing directly with a much more established one at Hull FC (and even Leeds & Bradford) that has a proven and successful track record.

If it was down to me, we'd have run a better youth setup all the years we were in the NL's, but for a variety of reasons (mainly financial) that didn't happen and we've had to deal with it. Believe me, we're signing a lot (and I mean a lot) of good young players now (check how our academy sides are doing). It actually amazes me the likes of Welham, Taylor and Latus are so good considering the restrictions we've faced. As I've said before, we're using the rules to the best of our advantage, but the aim is to replace the likes of Galea, Mason, Fisher and Newton with homegrown talent. And it will happen.

What are you talking about? Hull KR's Scholarship and U15's look very strong as do our U18's who did well enough to finish in the higher U18 tier with the top academies out of the Super League whilst also beating established sides like Saints and Wigan along the way.

We've gone through this before some time ago Smokey (prior to SL being expanded) when you then insisted that the competition would be weakened because by definition there were not SL quality players outside SL because if there were they would already be at a SL club. At least be consistent with your arguments otherwise you might appear to have an agenda which entails arguing a point purely because the target is Hull KR.



If there are such players (and I believe that there are as a matter of fact because we've signed such players in the past, I don't know what you really think because you keep changing your mind as long as it gives you a stick to beat HKR with) then Hull KR can take 1 fourteenth of the blame for not spotting them.

And please don't give me the Harlequins argument when they are only using the players they are because they can't afford to sign anyone better, British or otherwise.

What were your opinions of our signing of Dobson?



How do you think our under 18's have done this season?

lets face fellow kr fans our club should be foreign player free and have a academy team full of stars all that in four seasons. because lets face it other teams can do what they want .but when it comes to our club where being slated left right and centre they must be at least three threads on here that are slating us for different things. i give up arguing with some of you people on here because your expectations for a team promoted from national league one/championship in under four seasons is unreal i wounder what people will be saying about widnes when there promoted ??????

Cas got relegated twice and lost most of their youngsters but still don't have 10 overseas players in the team.