I would look for something along the lines of the RFL to take on about 300 in each age group at so at any one time we would about 1200 affiliated at any one time. Which is a similar if a little smaller amount to the current academy numbers but spread over a slightly larger age group with about 300 ‘graduating’ each year.
The pathway I would look have would be amateur coaching (improved of course) between 5/6 and 14, with a much much bigger focus on touch/tag. The best 300 14 year olds taken into the RFL elite coaching scheme, split between 15 ‘super clubs’ throughout the country, here they would get maybe 3 additional training sessions a month, and about 8 matches a year, and access to elite facilities whilst still with their amateur club.
At 15 and 16, a similar thing happens, with more access from the elite coaches and a couple more matches. At 17 their ‘super club’ becomes their club in the same way they would currently, but again through these centrally funded clubs, they all play each other in a 15 team league. In the year they turn 18 they can join a Championship or C1 club, and still be eligible for their ‘super club’. The next year they will join an SL club or turn pro/semi-pro at a championship/c1 club, with a limit of 30 players being employed by any club at any one time.
The advantages I see in doing something like this is it means more kids get more access to better coaching, it stops the kind of thinking we saw at Hull FC where they picked 4/5 youngsters they saw as having SL potential and the rest were simply ‘filler’, it would mean kids could be coached to fulfil their potential not necessarily to do a job for a specific club side, it would mean we could employ people like JP or even someone like Andrew Johns to go be specific coaches spending one session a fortnight with each club doing specific skills coaching whilst paying them one wage, and I think it puts the focus on making the best rugby players these kids can be, rather than the best rugby players the clubs need.
As for how we distribute them? There are different options, we could have it that at the start of the year the kids turn 19 they can be signed by any club, anywhere, or we could look at some kind of draft system or anything in between really.
Its a long term investment though, and hopefully the RFL will see it as such, and continue with it
