Re, Lovegrove, I'd be very sorry to see him go. His low try ratio could be in attributed to never having a sustained run in his best position which is second row. Some of the best form I've seen from Lovegrove was last season filling in for Patterson when he was running in tries for fun. He's played a good few games at prop prior to this season, he has never been and never will be a prop. As for his missed tackles I feel he has been required to play big minutes to compensate for others who could not. Any forward at KR playing the minutes he has (in the middle of the park) would probably miss a few tackles. I think the guy is just peaking in terms of performance. Keep.

I'm not sure that players like Maki, Paniu, Larroyer, Talanoa, Feka, Costigan, Miller etc etc improve the standard of SL. Some, like Paea & Weyman do. I'm not advocating getting rid of foreign players, just stop signing the crap ones and invest that money longer term in youth development.

A low turnover of players & you might be able to promote juniors to fill the gaps, a high turnover (as we've had) & you've no choice but to go into the market. The number of overseas players is disappointing but it's just a reflection of what's available domestically.

But you've still got to pay senior pros to play first team. Against the likes of Talanoa and Maki, you're unlikely to be saving much to spend on the kids. Though I agree, clubs could maybe be a bit more ready to look at the Championship, the possibility that they don't more often is for good reasons has to be considered. Firstly, is the talent there in the amounts we like to assume? And secondly, is that much of it likely to be that keen to train full-time when in many cases they wouldn't be that much better off and it might damage their prospects in their other job/career?



If the RFL wants more spending on development, it needs to ring-fence more of it for that, one way or another. It's very hard to make a self-interest case to most of the clubs for spending big on junior development at the expense of the first team.

Larroyer played 17 Super League matches last season scoring a number of tries and Costigan played regularly for Newcastle in the NRL perhaps you should reserve judgement until you have seen them play in 2014. I agree the two PNG players are a gamble but wasn't Stanley Gene?

Quite right, it's about time Catalan were booted out, I can't think of one decent English player to come through their youth system.