Quote Mild Rover="Mild Rover"I think a simple descriptive summary is the best way to do this. My questions are ‘how did Hull KR’s academy perform in terms of producing players for Hull KR’s first team?’ and ‘How does that compare with Hull’s academy for their first team?’
I’ve chosen to look at debutants from a 5-year period, 2012-2016. By that point, any excuse we had about starting from scratch after promotion no longer held. The fact that after at least bringing through Welham, Taylor and Watts in the preceding few years, production actually slowed down is in itself interesting - possibly suggesting that it is more about talent than systems. Or maybe the new system was worse than the very little that preceded it. 2012 was the year we adopted ‘building for the future’ as a tag line and appointed a head coach in large part because of his reputation for player development. It was also the year Pearson took charge at Hull. 2016, obviously Rovers went down (some of the games included below are of course Championship matches, and that is a limitation of the comparison with data I’ll find later for Hull) and the academies merged. Any more recent debutants, I feel like it is difficult to judge yet - Elliot Wallis or Harry Bardle who knows at this stage? Similarly It won’t be until a couple of years after the COHA has closed that we’ll get a fuller idea as to whether it was working.
So for each of the included years, Rovers’ debutants and number of games they went/have gone on to play for us (mostly sourced from Wikipedia).
2012: Salter (121), Green (81), Peterson (4), Johnson (1)
2013: Ollet (26), Guzdek (2), Beharrell (1)
2014: Esslemont (6 [possibly 7), Hallett (2), Robinson (2)
2015: Lawler (60), Marsh (42), Holker (4)
2016: Oakes (24), Cator (17), Wardill (17), Jubb (7), Moran (7)
Although this is about Hull KR, it is maybe worth noting that none of the above who have left Rovers are currently in SL.
So, while those lads individually can be proud of having represented Rovers, I don’t think Rovers overall can be even remotely satisfied with the return on their investment!'"
Sooooooo, Mrs. B owned you. That has got to be the biggest bite of a Pie since “Jaws”
