Drilling skills and conditioning for hours every week at that age will just send plenty packing when they've got school to focus on. Sport up to under 16 (at least) needs to be primarily about enjoying it, or they simply won't want it enough further down the line, especially when our sport doesn't pay your average pro anywhere near enough to be set for life so most know they really do need the education on offer to them.

And yet 14 year olds in other sports still come through the stated 'regime' and make it big or get to a high standard, why should it be different in RL?
You telling me it's easier getting down to a swimming pool XX miles away (because there simply aren't the facilities or open facilities nearby) at 6am and knocking out the training is any easier than the focus on skills/training for rugby in a supposedly hot bed of rugby with plenty of facilities on the doorstep?
Those that won't do it can't be that committed anyway, or do they think they can just turn up for training a couple of times a week?
Yes there is school but as I said, in other sports kids manage that and train every single day AND have to travel miles away. the kids in and around Hull have plenty of facilities nearby.

Don't know why the fact there are no kids in the sqaud comes as a surprise, we've been off the pace coaching wise for a time now, indeed even at the club itself, no-one has come through since Shaul have they aside from sporadic apperances by JA but he's now at another club essentially and doing much better.

For anybody interested in really getting to the bottom of this topic I urge you to read a book called Bounce
I've read it 4 times
I moved to Melbourne 6.5 years ago and whilst in Hull I coached Youth RL for 7 years and when I was the U12 coach we had 15 of the team on scholarship at FC and KR
My daughter at aged 14 was a good swimmer training 2 mornings a week at 5am to 7am and 4
Nights a week and competing most weekends
Knowing what I know now and looking at youth Tennis and RL in Aus I would have coached differently
I would have had the boys in 5 x a week at U12 and you can ask any parent of the kids I coached that those kids would have been there.
They were a great bunch of kids who lived and loved the sport and being in their team
School work was and is more importnant than sport !
Sleep is more important than sport

So going back to my point;

It's more than possible for a 14 year old to dedicate himself or herself to a sport but place it behind schoolwork and sleep and family time

Yeah sure friends have to understand their passion but something has to give if you're chasing a dream

10,000 hours of purposeful practice doesn't happen doing something 5 hours a week as a teenager

My younger daughter has been advised by Tennis Australia that she needs to participate in all forms of tennis for 10 hours a week at aged 10, if she wants to make the Tour

It's a different sort of thinking altogether and I hope one day at FC we see the light

Wigan have approx 22 coaches and we have what ? 4-6

It gets cold in Melbourne by the way !!
I've gone to work when it's 1c at 7am on
many occasions

We have an electric blanket lol

I like rugby league, but there's more to life. Kids need to read books, go to the cinema, smell the roses and enjoy their youth a bit if they're going to grow into well rounded people.

Fair enough, you might get the odd teenage monomaniac with an incredible drive and passion for RL. But in a city the size of Hull it'd be unhealthy IMO if there were a team's worth in every year group.

And yes, maybe that attitude is part of why the Aussies always beat us, but I'd suggest it is why we're so much better than them at so many other things.

Mild Rover -

It's quite simple really

Only 0.01% of the western world are professional sportspeople
The tough regime I advocate only applies to 0.05% as 0.04 of people still don't make it despite an incredible effort

Almost all kids who dedicate their lives to making it have no regrets
It gives them great life grounding

They become incredibly organised

They also love their comrades and team bonding that never
happens in school

chasing a sports dream is not for everyone but it's great fun
trying

10,000 hours ignore purposeful practice will make an expert on any field

Okay, that's more realistic - we're talking about 1 in 2000 across all sports. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that RL is as popular among boys in Hull as all other sports put together. That is 1 in 4000. Now I'll guesstimate that there are roughly 6000 boys in each year group within the city's catchment. That's one and a half boys. And there we encounter a problem that swimmers, golfers and even tennis players don't face so much - the number of people you need to practice and play with in RL.

No doubt the 0.01% are happy and have no regrets. However do the 0.04% who don't (ie 4 times as many) have the same feeling or are they acceptable casualties even if they end up depressed, embittered and hating the sport?

On to the Hull area and its no real surprise there are no city representatives given the sad state of junior rugby. The combined academy is a shambles but there is a deeper problem here in that the incentives for the professional clubs to invest are minimised because of conflicting interests. Everywhere else in RL land there are clear geographical divides between teams but not in Hull as it is far from a simple East/West divide with plenty of FC fans and families living in the East. Given that Hull have the bigger crowds and the West has a smaller population that is self evident. We have seen before that Hull's attempts to invest in Sirius were undermined by dobbins cuckoos getting jobs and at the COH academy a dobbin buffoon is now in charge. It has to be frustrating when Hull have spent more over the years on Academy teams only to have efforts undermined by an unprincipled ambulance chaser trying to sponge up players on the cheap.

If the COH academy is to ever work it needs a neutral (almost certainly an outsider) coach. Hands off and equal funding from both clubs and the players free to pick their professional club, no artificial draft.

Agree about both comments, a joint academy was never going to work, especially with KR ruining it from the inside.

Not only that, we have lost the rivalry part of the game and lost another youth team.

The thing always bugged me as a kid it was the Head teacher who made the decision if your school plaid the game or not [my late farther and the late Mr Strickland then PE teacher coached at Riley High in 50/60's] only for a total outsider to take over as Head and close the RL team down.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stop ... ed649f90bb Very interesting must read on Youth in Sport

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stop ... ed649f90bb Very interesting must read on Youth in Sport