I agree with LBC, it's the greedy SL clubs who have £ucked up yet again, enlisting loads of young future talents within their organisations, deciding to pay johnny foreigner obscene amounts of dosh for coming over here & taking the p1ss and then trying to bully clubs from a lower division & offloading their kids onto them with some hair-brained scheme to protect & nurture their own assets but with very little commitment from themselves. Take the Bradford Bulls situation for example, I believe that they should have been forced to sell their major assets to pay off debts, for example John Bateman & Elliot Whitehead were made long term offers by their club just prior to the crap hitting the fan. The players were the clubs' only assets, so how were they allowed to hang onto them ?
Another example & very current situation. I along with HalifaxJohn were chatting to Danny Fleming's dad up Greetland last weekend at an amateur game, now I like Danny & have watched his rugby for years at various levels but what the hell is going on with the pro game generally when he can be classed as good enough to represent his country ( and I'm not saying he isn't BTW ! ) yet not good enough to get into a struggling ( on the field & off it ) SL club languishing near the bottom of the league ladder and his club are in a situation where the rules are being changed so that lads such as him will be farmed out to a partner club. In Danny's case, I know he got injured at his partner club so we'll never know if he was gonna make their matchday 17 and he was very unlucky while playing for Rochdale suffering a bad knock on his debut but if you were the coach of a championship club would you be prepared to play four or five kids in your team in one go ? I really hope the lad gets the break he needs to step up & good luck to him, playing for your country must be an awesome feeling & is certainly in my book a great achievement at whatever level so I congratulate him on that & all the best to him.
I remember the great Mick Blacker coaching us up Greetland, a man who i had great respect for, he had some wonderful values and used his own playing career to be able to explain to lads who were short of confidence & pick them up again if they were made of the right stuff. In his day the aim was to "earn a bit of beer money" to boost the weekly wage by getting some games at a pro club. Then the aim was to get some 1st team action & in his case progress to playing for his county, those were honours that got you noticed for the international squads. Now I know that this system isn't in place anymore but i suppose young Danny is making a similar path but it's the regular weekly matches that these players need & by the SL clubs acting the goat most of these young lads are going to miss out.
A two-tier SL programme will not happen cos the top-tier clubs don't want it & will be allowed to dictate.
