You must mean Paul as poor Mike never got one, do you remember him at work fetching his own bacon on a fri? poor sod lol good man fletch used to make me laugh at line 3.

Mike was a top guy tbf , he loved his Cupsa tea and his mug was ridiculously big

Are you including Andy Last and Lee Radford in that group?

Is that not obvious? Can't remember seeing anything were either of them said he was a star at u20's! Maybe you could link me to somewhere? I'd be happy to be corrected.

I think there are a couple of things. Firstly you have to cast your net wide enough to identify and get the right talent. You have to nurture the ones with the most potential. Then give them the right opportunities. In my (not particularly well-informed) opinion with Last we've done the first two well and Gentle was generally far better than Agar on the latter. For every Shaul, there's a Nicklas, but surely that's the point, you speculate to accumulate, get some winners, and the resulting pipeline is the consequence of investment, better quality development programmes, and quality of filtering. An element of luck may be involved, but Shaul, Lineham, Green, Crooks and Bowden all having breakthroughs in the last couple of years, with Cunningham and the two Tyson-Wilsons knocking on the door surely suggests there's more to our youth development programmes than just luck.

It has been lucky for us that they've adapted so well, on the flip side Green & Bowden have been around the first team squad for a few years and not yet fully established themselves. The initial negativity towards anything but our 18's/16's when Pearson took over, it turns out, was massively overstated. We have Last & Radford to thank for that.

Including Fletcher & Nethertons we have had a third so yes, you are wrong.

Yon could say it's luck. You could say it's good filtering of our squad by the coaching staff, strong development pathways, affording Crooks the right opportunities at a young age.


Props [ugenerally[/u develop later and Green's been given a starting squad number. Whether both will be first choice props remains to be seen but I reckon Green has a good shot at being a regular.


That's my point. If we're getting 1-2 players coming through a year, as now looks likely, why is that just" luck", rather than a reasonable return on a decent programme of selection and training delivered by the right people?

Go on then put me right , who was it ?

willie mason?

He got a bigger payout than Netherton and Fletcher combined. Only had to play 200 minutes for it too!

Oh right if that's the case how many minutes did Michael crocker play??

But I do agree its good to see both clubs working together

Difference being the UK government wouldn't allow Crocker into the country, Mason got in. But please don't allow facts to stand in the way of a good bit of lunacy.

But didn't these players come through your system when it was seriously under funded and neglected? It's only seems now it has been addressed since AP has pumped large sums into the set up, according to reports and threads on here? Surely Rule, Cath and Aaagar can take some credibility from these players coming through?

As for lucky I think it seems pretty obvious NH simply means having 3 kids come through in 1 season that are practically ready for starting positions in your first team. Doesn't happen very often. I think you guys see it as a slight dig but I read it as paying you guys a compliment.

I agree with 1865, I watched Crooks a lot as a youngster and he looked like he could be a good SL player, but he has certainly passed my expectations at this stage. Last season ( starting against Wigan at home) he just seemed to progress so much.

I think some people are over emphasizing the "working together" aspect. All they really share is a dislike of the current SL management and the proposed direction the game is heading in. This is a one issue alliance, much as Labour and the Tories are both against Scottish Independence to use a current example. With his sly digs at Hull Hudgell once again proves what we all know anyway, he's a bitter little man who can never be trusted as such. However with the future direction of SL balancing on a knife edge at present it makes sense for AP to hold his nose and let him in the room for now.

I don't think Adam Pearson is too worried about the future of RL. All he needs is enough time to get back into football and cut his losses[urlhttp://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/Hull-FC-owner-Adam-Pearson-linked-Leeds-United/story-20090107-detail/story.html[/url. Surprising after this statement [urlhttp://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/mobile/sport/rugby-league/hull-fc/pearson-won-over-by-affinity-shown-in-league-1-5953593[/url

Old news and you should have saved your frothing for your own closed, boring forum

I like you, you will be easy to make a fool of, hopefully you will last a few weeks and we can have some fun with you.

Love the Rovers fans posting on here, have they just bought new laptops.

Maybe they knew of a spare one floating about

What about that Wigan lot - luckiest team in the league.

Best infrastructure in the game, why would it be lucky for them?

It's called irony!

I bet none of their lads are on 70K either.

Probably because they're not idiots then.