You say that, but the possibility hasn't really been considered has it? An immediate and rabid assumption that the panel have been complicit in engineering an outcome with the sole purpose of disadvantaging Hull KR. As opposed to focusing scarce central academy funding where the marginal returns are greatest ie removing spend where there are geographical overlaps and awarding elite status to the better candidate.

Mike Smith is RFL Vice President. This appointment was met more with "Nice one, that won't do Rovers any harm" than "OMG the RFL is bent as" I suspect.

While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat.

Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo.

On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting.

Quote Mild Rover="Mild Rover"While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat. Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo. On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting. '" I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.

Quote Mild Rover="Mild Rover"While the optics aren’t great, Rovers fans campaigning against the decision need to be very careful about making this a central plank for now. If the guy is a military hero with more medals than Usain Bolt, didn’t involve himself in discussions or decisions relating to the KuH clubs, and once saved an infant from drowning in a duck pond and her parents are Rovers fans it could fall very flat. Even if the process was, from some perspectives flawed, I do still think Rovers could be beneficiaries rather than victims but I’m probably the only one. The economics don’t stack up, from a selfish POV, imo. On the paranoia - it is wiser than being docilely trusting. '" I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.

Quote Mrs Barista="Mrs Barista":D I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.'" Social media isn’t really my scene, beyond dedicated RL sites. But from what I hear that sounds plausible. I mean, the tone on here was more ‘ha, ha dobbins’ than ‘protect the community clubs’, which doesn’t frame the substantive arguments particularly well. I see Mr Manson’s point. However, blame is a very useful political concept, whether justified or not. Like the outrage some posters have aimed at the council for not standing up Allam on maintenance and management of the KCOM stadium. I can’t be bothered, but I bet if I went back through that thread, I could find things at around the level of ‘spineless’.

Quote Mrs Barista="Mrs Barista":D I've seen it claimed he is ill-equipped to make rugby decisions despite the fact he has been the president of the RFL and here seems to have intellectual capability greater than most (maybe not you obvs) https://sldinfo.com/2016/08/transformin ... an-andrew/ Rovers fans calling him a "sicko" on SM ‐ I mean really? Perhaps they should take some wisdom fron Mark Manson: People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are, you're not special, and blame is a mostly useless concept.'" Social media isn’t really my scene, beyond dedicated RL sites. But from what I hear that sounds plausible. I mean, the tone on here was more ‘ha, ha dobbins’ than ‘protect the community clubs’, which doesn’t frame the substantive arguments particularly well. I see Mr Manson’s point. However, blame is a very useful political concept, whether justified or not. Like the outrage some posters have aimed at the council for not standing up Allam on maintenance and management of the KCOM stadium. I can’t be bothered, but I bet if I went back through that thread, I could find things at around the level of ‘spineless’.

did Rovers fail their
working with children application ?

I'm pretty certain that had Hull been excluded the first Rovers reaction would have been 'haha curly turds' from grown adults - it's what we do. The positioning of the whole process and decision making as uniquely motivated by a corrupt "sicko" Hull fan trying to dismantle Hull KR's youth academy is narcissistic and paranoid IMO given we don't know the content of the submissions. Whilst it's nice to spread the money thinly for optics purposes I suppose in the end it comes down to the purpose of the academy. Is it to allow more young players to be involved in the game and be affiliated to a professional club, or is it to create a genuine first team pathway for the "elite" in a catchment and optimise their progression? If it's the latter then surely it makes sense to focus resource where it has the best chance of delivering first team player outcomes through the local pool. If you have a poor track record on this, whether through having, say very few homegrown players in your squad or "poaching" players from other catchments, then you can see why decisions have been reached. That's not Dean Andrew's fault, IMO.

On the stadium it's the obvious thing to blame the Allams, or the council, and we like to do both of course. But it's mostly a useless exercise other than making us feel a little galvanisation.

Of course, many would. Credit to the Wakefield fans I’ve seen for showing more empathy - possibly resulting from them having expected to be the ones getting what they regard as the poopie end of the stick.



Indeed, but without being very active on social media, I don’t know how representative that is of fan opinion on and off those platforms. My safe guess would be somewhat but not completely. Without condoning it, it doesn’t surprise me that some people have reacted emotionally or even aggressively without knowing the full facts - it is what some do. I condemn anybody calling Dean Andrew a ‘sicko’ or similar. Given his links to Hull FC, and assuming he doesn’t (didn’t

) have similar links to Hull KR, I do think it would have been wise for him remove himself from those discussions. I doubt he’s an idiot and he may very well have done that. If he did, it’d probably be a good idea to gently leak that to the press - to not do so would be taking collective responsibility a bit far imo. Even if he didn’t, highlighting flaws in the process isn’t even half the ‘battle’.




the current youth development pathways in RL appear very, very inefficient to me - but it depends how you measure it and why clubs or fans want an academy. These tweaks don’t fundamentally change what I think is a broken system and some slightly unhealthy attitudes that arise from it. With a bit of intelligence and imagination, I think that a club that is now free to adopt a different approach could do better by the measures I would use.



For the reasons ‘Wilf’ has laid out, it is not the the councils fault, IMO. Hull FC are part of the community but are not the community. My parents don’t want to pay more council tax so that a council employee can have the privilege of scraping bird off seats at the KCOM. They don’t know it yet but I shall tell them later. Taking on the risk

of being landed with such responsibility seems imprudent both financially and politically. On the behaviour of the current owners of the SMC, you have my genuine (though impotent) sympathy.

As someone said to me earlier , maybe they’ve given FC the licence as there’s more FC academy graduates in the Dobbins team than from their own!

https://twitter.com/hullfcofficial/stat ... 51488?s=19 Not academy, but schools partnership related - good to see.

https://twitter.com/hullfcofficial/stat ... 51488?s=19 Not academy, but schools partnership related - good to see.

The footage just goes to show how much (often unheralded) work is undertaken by the community team.
Got some really good people involved within the club.

Interesting to hear Ralph Rimmer tonight on the length of time the process has been underway (3 years) and seems that the primary aim is quality of academies rather than quantity of participants. And that currently academies aren't delivering high enough quality so can't continue to just do what's historically been done. I guess time will tell whether the decisions will deliver.

I think it would possibly be a fair shout to say the number of talented young players coming through on the whole had been in a steady decline for a few years now. So in some ways I can see the logic in trying to actually make a change in terms of focusing more intently on smaller groups to then see a greater number make it as opposed to diluting the groups and seeing less make it

I’m not sure the lack of academies for a period helped or the farcical set up when AP invested heavily in the last reincarnation of the Academy only to see the fixtures become a lottery as to whether there would be an opposing team to play each week.

I still think it’s imperative that all SL clubs should have a proper Acadamy set up and it should be mandatory. Too many clubs for too long have neglected that part of the game due to cost saving or wanting to use that money for the first team.

I think the Elite Licensing may yet prove to be a good thing but hope they have a review period in 2 or 3 years to see the impact good and bad on the game. Ones things for sure and that is it’s a very emotive subject.