Hasbag wrote:
Every team has little choice but to bring academy players through. It's the way forward. There are so many financial benefits to bringing through your own players. They offer dispersions to the salary cap. They free up quota and marquee player spots. They want to play for the club they've grown up supporting so their contracts are easier to negotiate.
I don't want to derail to thread too much, but Rovers are currently following the Warrington model of a few years ago and just buying a team. Abdull left, and that is the perfect time to see what Ellis could have done, and that would only have been for the odd game when injuries/suspensions hit. Instead they went out and bought Reynolds who is a garbage player and probably no better than what Ellis could do.
Finances might have forced our hand the last couple of years into playing some more academy players, but 100% in the long run it will help alleviate financial pressure on the club.
A strong academy is of benefit to the clubs who can retain their best products. It's more than a bit disappointing that Rovers academy has never really approached parity with Hull's in the modern era - never mind Saints' or Wigan's. The academy derby was won 8-28 by Hull yesterday.
The problem comes when you rely on it because the outputs of even the best academies are uneven. We rode the patience train to the Championship in 2016. Your low-key recruitment after your cup wins was predicated to a large degree by an expectation (rather than just a hope) that you had a group of academy players who would step up to be frontline players. People talk a lot about pathways being blocked… if Reynolds were really “garbage” and Ellis is/gets to be good enough, then it should be a very surmountable obstacle for the youngster.
