gutterfax wrote:
Nope......totally different.
Sam Tomkins was picked to play as a squad member in 2009.....he got a chance to play through injuries...and made an impact over about 10 or 11 games. He was also mentioned in reports prior to 2009 with regard to him being one to watch.
The major difference though is that a player, who your coach felt could do a job when asked to.......ie, when you needed cover, was good enough for SL on July 24th.....but only good enough for CH1 bottom dwellers 3 months later. If you had more faith in these kids instead of paying average overseas players in your pursuit of your better run and more recently successful neighbours, HKR could once again be a force to be reckoned with......as it is, you will suddenly HAVE TO prune your squad over the next 3 years and will have nobody coming through to replace them....cue more aplications for dispensations.
Year 5 of SL for HKR.....you are a team full of imports that have achieved very little.
Year 5 of London in SL and there was a 2nd place finish...and a CC final.....neither winning anything, but closer than you've managed and we only had 9 overseas players in year 5
The plans are place to replace the aussies/older players, for exmaple Taylor and Cox are expected to kick on and become regular 2nd rowers replacing Newton and Galea, the fact we had a top phase 18's shows we are going in the right direction. If you asked anyone who had seen Spaven over the last 3 years they would probably tell you he was never going to be a 'super league standard' player hence why no other club has gone in for him from super league. We have faith in the youngsters, Welham, Fox, Lovegrove, Watts are all players signed at a fairly young age and have developed and improved.
Your right regarding Quins developing there own players which is a credit to them, however it has taken what 15 years of super league standard to do it. What some fail to appreciate is when your in National League you can't/don't attract the top youth players especially when you have the likes of Hull FC, Leeds and Bradford in the division above and as a result we end up with trying to develop players such as Spaven or giving chance to the 'cast off' from other clubs such as i'Anson and to some extent Fox. Quins had the security of being safe in the division and that was for the good of the game to help it attempt to gain natonal publicity which I will add I support the idea with Quins.
Just because a player didn't sign for you does not mean you have not helped develop him once he's at your club, I seem to remember the London club sending a lot of youngster to FC to help with there devlopment as you couldn't develop them as a club and they could as they had the best youth setup in super league over that time. The aim for Morgan, set out by the chairman is to bring through our own players and hopefully by the end of say 2011 likes of Galea will be out of contract and likely to go back we will have a youngster who will step up and replace him.