You are blaming Paul Cullen there for a problem that starts far before the players even arrive at the club. You may be surprised to also hear that recent changes to Service Area rugby will mean that players will now not play representtaiuve rugby in competitive games until U16s. For various reasons I am not going to comment on whether I think that will help the situation or not.

No, i`m blaming the development of the youth players whilst they were here.



Mark, surely you must question the ability of the coaching staff that Paul Cullen assembled in its failure to produce a single pivot player in 6 years to put pressure on first team players. Anyone in our first team that had either 1,6.7,9 or 13 on their jersey was not threatened at all by anyone in the reserves other than through an injury crisis, Harrison has had a run at 13 but that was originally down to injuries and like i said above i think he will be a 2nd rower or prop eventually.



As well as the pivot players we havn`t produced a single centre in 6 years either.

He left us with a squad that's 80 minutes away from getting to Wembley, that'll do for me.



The young players that he dripped into the first team, that have become regulars, are now becoming stars in the own right, Cooper & Harrison in particular. He was more than willing to give youth a go, so I'll just deem that during his tenure we had no pivots of a suitable standard. I'm sure he could have thrown another Gary Hulse at us, but what would that have proved.



We've had a centre Rob, Varkulis. We've had a fullback Rob, Riley.



If there were blokes in SL, that Cull had refused to play, in these positions that had left and gone elsewhere and were killing us, I'd accept your oint Rob, their isn't, so that'll be the reason why we've seen none in our side.



I just think he's easy to have a pop at, ultimately, he failed, sure. But for me, he left us in a good state.

I'm at a loss as to how the lack of halves or loose forwards is a damning indictment on the Reserve/Academy setup. Saints have done well to find one halback to (hopefully) come thorough in ten years. Leeds have been incredibly lucky to have McGuire and Burrow be in the same age bracket in the same time frame. One thing Paul Cullen should be commended for is getting the club to re-focus it's efforts on the junior setup.

That is my point, the problems run far deeper throughout schools, youth and junior rugby (and not just in this area).