Annual report by the RFL


Outstanding
Hull FC
Leeds
St Helens
Warrington
Widnes
Wigan

Good
Huddersfield
Hull KR
Wakefield

Needs Improvement
Castleford

Weak
Salford


1 = Outstanding
2 = Good
3 = Needs Improvement
4 = Weak

Castleford
Meet Players Needs - 2
Delivery - 2
Leadership & Management - 3
[uOverall - 3[/u

Huddersfield
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 2
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 2[/u

Hull FC
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

Hull KR
Meet Players Needs - 2
Delivery - 2
Leadership & Management - 2
[uOverall - 2[/u

Leeds
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

St Helens
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

Salford
Meet Players Needs - 4
Delivery - 4
Leadership & Management - 4
[uOverall - 4[/u

Wakefield
Meet Players Needs - 2
Delivery - 2
Leadership & Management - 2
[uOverall - 2[/u

Warrington
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

Widnes
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

Wigan
Meet Players Needs - 1
Delivery - 1
Leadership & Management - 1
[uOverall - 1[/u

And the clubs will still waste money on overseas crocks.

Crazy.

At least Wigan have made a decision that should benefit them in the long term rather than the short termism shown by other SL clubs

Makes grim reading for the Salford club

Weren't Leeds vastly under performing just several months ago? Now it's suddenly top notch (for reasons that were there all along, strong club ethos, connection with Leeds Beckett etc.)....those academy appraisals are rubbish.

Absolutely. Especially as their previous ratings were poor too:

[uSalford[/u
Achievements of System
2013 - 3
2014 - 4
2015 - N/A (to be measured under a new system)

Meets Players Needs
2013 - 4
2014 - 4
2015 - 4

Delivery
2013 - 4
2014 - 3
2015 - 4

Leadership & Management
2013 - 4
2014 - 4
2015 - 4

[uOverall[/u
2013 - 4
2014 - 4
2015 - 4

The problem is that the lowest score on any section is taken as the overall grade. Which is just daft. The whole point of an overall score is to take into account the whole situation.

It's not helpful to look at just one year, as you say Leeds was put down to a 3 last year. Which shows how daft it was, but looking over the 3 years scores so far gives an indication. I hope they continue with it but just tweak it a bit. Though it doesn't matter how you score it really to show how bad Salford's academy system has been. 2 years, with Koukash's money, should leave the club with a higher score than 4's across the board.

Alan Hunte has today left his position as head of youth at Salford, with Martin Gleeson expected to fill the position. Unsure whether Huntey could have done much better with the resources at hand (I would have thought these would have increased when Koukash came on board) but perhaps they haven't.

During his time as head of youth development, we've still seen the likes of Theo Fages, Niall Evalds, Jordan Walne, Adam Walne, Stefan Ratchford, Marc Sneyd etc come through our system. Positive comments from Koukash since the report was published, indicate majority of his money from now on will be spent on youth.

Wonder how long it would take for our international side to improve if every club was scoring "outstanding".

All depends upon your starting point is, and what the target is.

Captain obvious over here.

Salford is the easy one to pick on but why are Huddersfield and Cas so average/poor? Good catchment areas, decent structure at both clubs and two top British coaches.

I don't think there's much wrong with Hudds academy. It's probably something relatively minor that has led them getting a 2 rather than a 1, as its only in 1 category.

Cas, I suspect, aren't putting enough money into the facilities or their academy as a whole. Before Cas fans jump in, I'm not having a go too much, Cas struggle financially as they have to run off their own income and don't have the benefit of being able to post losses each year.

It's why clubs incomes are so vital and are closely related to both our health as a sport and our ability to compete at international level.

Is there an equivalent report being published for the Championship sides?

Huddersfield were rated
1
1
2
Overall 2

Despite building one of the best indoor training centres in the game, Hudds were marked down because the training centre and the indoor barn, the 3G and the grass fields they use are about three quarters of a mile apart. The inspectors feel that to be an issue because it involves moving players (particularly Scholarship) from one location to another.

There's very little Huddersfield can do about that situation but it's plainly ridiculous to use that as a reason for not giving them an outstanding!

I'm pleased there are so many "outstanding" and "good" academies out there. Although I'd prefer a little less qualitative and hell of a lot more quantitative metrics.

Management is measurement, or so they say ...

Assessing a club or an academy will always (and should be) qualitative rather than quantitative. It'd be like saying Leeds academy is worse now than it was 10/12 years ago because there isn't another Sinfield, McGuire, Burrow, Diskin etc group coming through.


Agree. It's daft to do things like that, especially as, bizarrely, the overall grade is automatically the lowest grade of the 3 seperate criteria.

Since the report, which labelled Salford 'weak' we have beaten both Leeds and Widnes academies who coincidentally were given an 'outstanding' score. Josh Wood will also make his debut tonight against Warrington, the third academy player to do this season.

Yeah that's how the assessments work.

Just saying, considering our leadership and management, delivery and meeting of players need are so weak they're not doing too bad. Ryan Lannon, Matty Gee and now Josh Wood also making the step-up so far this season suggests things perhaps aren't as weak as the RFL would have you believe.

I haven't seen the respective line ups but it's possible that Leeds & Widnes played a large number of Yr1 Academy players ie U17s against U19s.

They may have felt that to be the appropriate level of challenge for their younger Academy players

And yet when asked to rely on your juniors, like other SL clubs, in the midst of the injury/suspension crisis we were told, by your own fans, that they weren't ready and/or good enough. So which is it? Are they any good or not?!

Does anyone actually take these scores seriously ??? We have brought the current man of steel through as well as the former England u19s captain. We made top 4 last year and went to wembley with a predominantly home grown squad. id rather my club carry on doing this and getting a bad score on a silly assessment.

It isn't so much based on quantities on players brought in but other factors like facilities

As I said, they give an indication over a period of years scores.

The fact that Clark came through Cas' academy isn't indicative of anything. Neither is one season's results at first team level. (Btw I make it as 14 out of Cas' announced squad of 30 were homegrown and 5/6 would be in the first choice 17 in 2014.)
Consistently training and developing youngsters to a high standard alongside other issues such as player welfare, training facilities etc is.

Without our youth setup constantly bringing SL players
Through cas are Hunslet, it's the only thing that keeps us as a top flight club, I'd rather us keep producing players for ourselves and the rest of the league rather than spending our limited resources on silly courses for players that won't make it to score higher on a silly assessment