I keep seeing plenty about rovers new academy including a couple of highly rated signings from Bradford but have seen fiddly squat about ours. Have I missed it or hasn't there been anything? Anyone know what is happening? Any coaching appointments? Any new players signed?

Coaching wise, the COHA coaching staff (with the exception of Jason Netherton) moved over to Hull FC. Danny Wilson, Rob Nickolay etc

Playing wise, I think that Hull did well with the split of players at Academy level. Definitely ended up with better players than Rovers did in my opinion. Rovers have heavily recruited since though. Hull don't appear to have.

Scholarship wise, Rovers have recruited all of the best players out this year's intake without question. Then Huddersfield and Castleford have taken 4 I think. Hull seem to have been left standing. Things change quickly at that age though.

As enjoyable as it is to have homegrown talent coming through, and both teams have made quite a fuss about it over the last decade, Hull I think only have 6 homegrown players with 30+ appearances. Not a brilliant return, albeit we've just released Washbrook, Logan, Green and Hadley who also met that criteria, so 10 in total.

Don't know about Rovers, but only Lawler springs to mind? If so that's shocking.

Absolutely correct and hence the revamp and investment at both sides of the river.

The worry for me is that if we haven't changed anything, what is going to change? At least rovers are trying something different even if it ultimately doesn't work but bastian has an outstanding record of spotting and developing talent. disappointing that we seem to have completely missed the boat this year with the new lads when we really should have been in pole position if we already had all of our staff in place

R.B.A wrote:Absolutely correct and hence the revamp and investment at both sides of the river. It's more comfortable to just gloss over the umpteenth round of jam tomorrow I guess. But you've had Sandercock as the youth development messiah, Peacock as the talent magnet culture catalyst, some sort of build for the future programme, a stab at a joint academy, lots of guff like this http://www.hu17.net/2014/02/20/rugby-le ... -in-youth/ The sum of all that is George Lawler. Obviously Hull aren't a beacon of excellence or anything but we do at least have a modest return. Given the number of false dawns and revolving door coaching appointments chez vous it might be worth managing expectations.

R.B.A wrote:Absolutely correct and hence the revamp and investment at both sides of the river. It's more comfortable to just gloss over the umpteenth round of jam tomorrow I guess. But you've had Sandercock as the youth development messiah, Peacock as the talent magnet culture catalyst, some sort of build for the future programme, a stab at a joint academy, lots of guff like this http://www.hu17.net/2014/02/20/rugby-le ... -in-youth/ The sum of all that is George Lawler. Obviously Hull aren't a beacon of excellence or anything but we do at least have a modest return. Given the number of false dawns and revolving door coaching appointments chez vous it might be worth managing expectations.

Why waste development cash when we can attract Dream Team international players?

Despite efforts on both sides of sorts, not many genuine Hull born stars in the last few years.

Not many Hull born sports stars in anything nor many other notables in the arts, music etc. Is it symptomatic of the underperformance of the area in just about everything other than teenage pregnancies?

Of course you know the background to Hadley and Shaul
They were the only 2 players to make it out of that age group
Dean walked away from rugby at 18 and was coaxed back after a year away at 19

Jamie was rejected by FC at 12 as too small
Then Rovers rejected him later on lol

So the only 2 kids from one full year of major talent made it. I don’t include Jordan Cox as he had no talent

Brutal. We've been lucky in that arguably the best of the current crop (Josh Hodgson apart), ie Shaul, Taylor and Houghton are black and whites. Bowden is England Knights too I guess. Unless you have a genuine affiliation to the club like these (helped by fairly recent success) there will always be the risk of burning cash on players that ultimately use you as a development route back to West Yorkshire/Lancashire. Tom Briscoe gave us great early years service for example but always felt inevitable he'd go back West.