Greg Florimos Boots wrote:
Posts like these get my goat and its not aimed at you Bullseye or even at Bradford for that matter, its more the system that is in place. Bradford are good at producing young players? Well its easy when you can go in to any catchment area and offer the bright lights of full time rugby isnt it, you are bound to "unearth" one or two gems. Just taking the all conquering Siddal U16 team from this year, how many of them will we see at Fax? Zero, we do not even get a look in, in the past though Bradford would have taken some of these players but as far as I know Bradford now hardly get a look in when it comes to the top young players and none of the players will be heading Bradford's way to produce so although you say its a shame other clubs are not as good as producing it will only be a short time now before the same will be said about Bradford.
Maybe the dig was aimed more at SL teams though and it that sense they will be like vultures knowing full well that if they want one of your players they can simply take them without having to pay a fee. The system is a shambles and until that changes the game as a whole will not improve and we will keep losing players who could have made it because they have nowhere to play.
I think you probably needed to pause for thought before you started this post GFB as that comment seems to be all over the place. So we signed O'Brien and Ollie Roberts from Siddal once. They're gone now. Ryan is a Bradford lad, Bentley from Oulton. Times have changed for Bradford as you acknowledge later. We can't compete on salaries or on SL glory, just having a good setup and track record of improving players.
Big clubs always have trawled catchments outside their area. Twas ever thus. We've been victims and beneficiaries of it over the years. So have Fax albeit more time the victim.
We've done very well taking on players that weren't wanted recently and turned them into decent prospects. Take Reiss Butterworth who made his league debut yesterday. Came through at Sharlston. Taken on by Fev then let go. We gave him a chance and he's taking it.
I guess my frustration is that we take a lot of lads who were initially overlooked by SL clubs, improve them and then those same SL clubs come in for them like vultures as you say. If only we could get our act together off the field we might have hung onto a few. Bradford lads like Whitehead and Bateman are instead in their prime elsewhere