with no money, a state dominated by AFL and no NRL team to raise RL's profile, WA still produces players that go on to be 1st teamers in the NRL. Good structure, good coaching and a decent scouting system is what is needed in every part of the UK.

The Crusaders are coached by Noble who has a history of using large numbers of overseas players.



At Bradford he regularly had 8/9/10 non GB qualified players. At Wigan; who along with Leeds have the best junior set up in RL he would often play an entire backline with not one GB qualified player plus forwards.



Noble isn't interested in developing young players-too much like hard work- he would rather let the NRL clubs do that for him.



If you look through all the side in SL you could take out 3 overseas players out of each side and replace them with younger UK players and the standard would remain the same.



If you took Obst, Korkedas and Demitriou out of the Wakey side and put some of their excellent youngsters in would they be any worse - no. If Cas took out Sherwin, Evans and McGoldrick would it have a negative effect on another club that produce a lot of very good junior players - no.



That is the problem with SL - far too many very average Aussie players.

Nope, there are a few threads on the Wakey and Crusaders forums clearly stating the best team won and

wishing the Crusaders and thier fans all the best.

It will be the same 23 of 34 when they play the midgets also, dont suppose that will matter though eh

I'm sure you will have some excuse, plaster for every sore comes to mind

we had 5 non brits against cas out of 17,3 against salford on easter monday and on good friday against catalans we had 4...thats an average of 4 per game, so if we are playeing crusaders they will have to cheat by using 19 players who are non brits to get your average lol

well done crusaders!



just saw the result.



brilliant

When we played you at the Hearwell we had 4 non feds and you had...10. We won 52-0. HTH

The same old arguments keep croping up, League has had 115 years to develop up North, Crusaders after nearly going bust have had less than 100 days. All clubs bring in overseas players my own club uses Aussies who have come in on European passports we have an Aussie coach we have been in super league for 3 years & have only 1 or two local lads from our own set up who are anywhere near Superleague at the moment. We have relied on cast off,s from Leeds.

Although clubs get a 3 year licence it is not long enough it has taken London 30 years to get any sort of youth development to produce (& people want to abandon it now) it is a long term thing For Wales to get any sort of home grown production line of players will take another 20 years (even with union players of good standard that are available) & will need all the support we can give.

As for the Australian experts posting on here if league had the input into its coffers that the Australian state puts in through the education system that TV pays for rights & no competition from soccer us Brits might do a bit better. At least we compete at the top of a sport that everyone plays (football) not minority sports that only a few ex British colonies play.

in australia rugby league is the pinnacle of sport, hence it is what juniors are all aiming at.



kids who are good at sport tend to be good at all sports.



in AUS the best athletes go into RL



in UK the best athletes go into football where the big money and glamour is.

next they would aim for union for the same reasons, and then probably cricket.

beyond that comes RL



no glamour and less financial benefit.



obviously the southern hemisphere are going to produce more RL players than this country.



why is anyone surprised?

The welsh club have been around 5 years not 100 days. This thread is not about 'home grown' it is about using fed trained players. There are plenty of good players on loan in SL. There are SL level youngsters dual registered / available for loan. Last year the Giants, finishing 3rd, had loan players like Scott Moore and Lee Mossop. Ben Jones Bishop at Quins / Cooper at Cas are examples of the players who could be available.



The RFL have made it too easy for Crusaders to knee jerk and sign from the NRL. They need to exert more pressure on clubs like wakey to get the number of non fed trained down.

As I've stated before Wakefield does a good job of producing professional players but they don't have the means to keep them when the bigger clubs wave their Visa Debit Cards in Trinity's direction.



Blaymire, George, Murphy, Morton, Brough, Gledhill, Davey, Pitts, Bibb, Ellis, Westwood, Mason, Feather, Ferguson, Snitch are all playing top flight rugby at present. There are a number of young lads in Wakefields squad who WILL play over the next few weeks.



There are too many ex Wakefield players now plying their trade in the lower divisions to mention.



As a Wakefield fan I am sometimes disappointed at the number of Non Fed trained players in our team and would like us to reduce that number. In past years we have had sporadic bursts of junior development followed by a couple of barren years, that’s not good enough!



John Kear and his staff have worked very hard to instigate system that recruits a continuous flow of talented players who feed into the junior setup at Trinity and last year we saw the fruits of that new system for the first time.



Over the next few years the challenge to the club is to continue their investment in youth and not to fall back to a Boom n Bust scenario. If they do that then Wakefield will reduce their reliance on Non Fed Players and will steadily fill the team with home grown Academy talent. Producing greater numbers of players will also allow Wakefield to remain competitive even in the face raids from the bigger clubs.



All this is taking time but has been underway for about three years now.



What I dislike about GiantJo's comments are that they are totally insincere and despite the noises she makes she has no interest in the overseas numbers and is just trolling for a bite from Trinity followers. It’s quite laughable that a pseudo Giants fan should point the finger at another club when Huddersfield have a ridiculous record when it comes to producing their own talent, with just a handful of recent successes to point out as examples.

I have recently been watching a tape of lancs v Yorks U11s from 1987 (featuring Saun Long and Paul Cooke) plus Leeds v warrington at Wembley, and it's so sad that maybe only three players made it to SL level. The skill amd enthuisiasm is tremendous (pushing in the scrum too) so where did all this talent go? Were they shunted aside for the Aussie quick fixes?