That sort of depends which way you look at things. Academy is successful. However it seems when players come into the first team they do not live up to their full potential

I agree but is that because of the losing environment in which they are expected to perform? It is much easier to progress when joining a well oiled team rather than one that is always expected to lose and whose playing style puts them on the backfoot. It obviously must be me, but when I see Saints, Wigan and even Leeds' youngsters, they look like physically developed and robust young men. Our lads, apart from Staveley and in particular the backs, look like boys. Must feed them something different to us.

I do think we have turned the corner a bit with bringing players through, this season Charles, Moy, Martin and Staveley have all shown they have potential to make SL playes. Think that has to be something to do with Riding, hopefully he has put systems in place for this to continue and the new people involved can take it on further

If it had been a few months ago I’d have feared that it was either a cost cutting measure or an argument over cost cutting. I’d agree that the academy and someone with the reputation Riding has would be way down on the ‘fix list’ at the club looking from the outside but if they genuinely feel we’ll benefit from a change then so be it.

Jez Litten for example was around a team and squad that won back to back CC, Josh Hodgson similar. He didn't flourish until he left the club. I don't think it's a winning or losing thing. There is clearly something missing. Since Horne and Yeamo have we really produced anyone of a good/excellent SL standard as these were?

Neither Litten and certainly Hodgson weren't give the chance at Hull to prove they were good enough.

Not just them 2 though….can add a few more to that list.We know Radford delivered the cup wins but his promotion/opinion of young players wasn’t very good…hardly promoted any and if he did,they was soon out of team and let go in favour of buying someone.

The games afoot wrote:Not just them 2 though….can add a few more to that list.We know Radford delivered the cup wins but his promotion/opinion of young players wasn’t very good…hardly promoted any and if he did,they was soon out of team and let go in favour of buying someone. To be fair none of those made good SL players, so it was probably the right decision. His big was Litten and probably Abdul (although there were circumstances for Abdul). We do have issues though turning players from the best academy players in the country to become SL players. I went to watch Hull academy beat Wigan academy easily a couple of years ago, two of those Wigan players stared in the cup final win. This was the game. https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2022/07/ ... t-hull-fc/

The games afoot wrote:Not just them 2 though….can add a few more to that list.We know Radford delivered the cup wins but his promotion/opinion of young players wasn’t very good…hardly promoted any and if he did,they was soon out of team and let go in favour of buying someone. To be fair none of those made good SL players, so it was probably the right decision. His big was Litten and probably Abdul (although there were circumstances for Abdul). We do have issues though turning players from the best academy players in the country to become SL players. I went to watch Hull academy beat Wigan academy easily a couple of years ago, two of those Wigan players stared in the cup final win. This was the game. https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2022/07/ ... t-hull-fc/

Hodgson was the clubs young player of the year and big things were expected

Yeah, but had Berrigan and Houghton at the time.

Although he wanted to stay at Hull, but they would give him something like 2k a year more.