Quote ="BoothferryBoy"Great article as usual.
Can't help thinking that everyone is still missing the point, there simply aren't enough boys playing the game.
Something I've been banging on about since my own boy took the game up as a six year old in 2004. In all that time, apart from the great Mark O at West Hull I've never seen a SL player from either professional club get involved with a junior club until this season when Gareth Ellis took a session at my boys current club East Hull.
Dan Wilson is a great lad but like most involved in the professional game has very quickly lost touch with core essentials of the game. As I have pointed out on numerous occasions to him it does not matter a jot how highly your academy is rated if there isn't a conveyor belt of boys being supplied to them from the self funding amateur game.
Both professional clubs are guilty of doing little or nothing for the amateur game and if the number of participating boys continues to fall then very soon they wont have enough quality boys to fill this new Super Academy.
=#0000BFI'm in my 55th year now and people have been telling me for most of those years the RL is dying sport, for the first time i actually think they are correct. Without an amateur game to under pin the professional game there is no hope. Unfortunately the majority of people who take money out the game are doing little or nothing for the amateur game. The game has only survived because of what is now an ever dwindling number of people who put their own money and time into the amateur game.'"
I think I've said on here before that I genuinely believe I will be in the generation that sees the end of rugby league as a full-time professional sport in Britain (I'm in my 30s).
