Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:39 am  

Lots of fair points above. I don’t think anyone reasonably expects that every signing will work, and we know a fair percentage of promising juniors don’t make first grade with us.

My issue with juniors is that other teams were signing that talent instead of us, because it wasn’t hard to see how successful Leeds had become on the back of that outstanding academy system. Other teams were always going to compete harder and improve their academy systems and I think GH at the time was keen to stick to his policies of payments etc, believing that young lads should be honoured to play for Leeds and come for less money than others might offer. Well you’ve got to get all aspects right.

There is evidence that the current crop is a bit special again; around half the England academy team which beat the Aussies tells you that. They are already graduating into first grade.

Sutcliffe and Handley are the only survivors of the previous academy system from how many years?

You only need one or two a year to make the cut; but you DO need one or two a year to make the cut.

The club didn’t get every decision wrong, there have been some cases of bad luck too. But for me it’s undeniable that the club has been mismanaged In recruitment for years. The table shows it and has done since 2016, the 2017 GF aside where really Cas should have won the title in form through the year.

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:13 am  

KaeruJim wrote:

Lots of fair points above. I don’t think anyone reasonably expects that every signing will work, and we know a fair percentage of promising juniors don’t make first grade with us.

My issue with juniors is that other teams were signing that talent instead of us, because it wasn’t hard to see how successful Leeds had become on the back of that outstanding academy system. Other teams were always going to compete harder and improve their academy systems and I think GH at the time was keen to stick to his policies of payments etc, believing that young lads should be honoured to play for Leeds and come for less money than others might offer. Well you’ve got to get all aspects right.

There is evidence that the current crop is a bit special again; around half the England academy team which beat the Aussies tells you that. They are already graduating into first grade.

Sutcliffe and Handley are the only survivors of the previous academy system from how many years?

You only need one or two a year to make the cut; but you DO need one or two a year to make the cut.

The club didn’t get every decision wrong, there have been some cases of bad luck too. But for me it’s undeniable that the club has been mismanaged In recruitment for years. The table shows it and has done since 2016, the 2017 GF aside where really Cas should have won the title in form through the year.

Good post.It will interesting if this crop of youngsters can be integrated into the first team.Holroyd ,Walters ,Trout and Johnson should all be given an opportunity to play first team next year.It maybe hard for Walters and Trout due to the club having so many backrowers.In Walters from what I've seen he looks a gem of a player

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:04 am  

The NRL players on the previous page is painting things far too generously.

Galloway was finished in the NRL when we signed him, an utter plodding dinosaur left behind as forwards became more athletic. Fallon was released by the titans because he was a member of the white powder glee club.

Lolohea was overweight and playing fullback in reserve grade and we signed him as starting stand off. Utterly bizarre, especially given the quality we used to have there.

My view's simple - we kept going cheap from the NRL and our success rate fell accordingly. All of the above were completely predictable.

Junior development has been just as bad.

Interesting - and right - that GH takes stick for all this. But how much responsibility lies with BM as well?

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:41 am  

Not all our unheralded or 'cheap' NRL signings have been flops. Kylie Leuluai was derided as a 'kolpak stiff' when he first signed, and ended up being part of the Golden Generation. Arguably the same could be said of Delaney, Cuthbertson and even Parcell.

On the flip side Leeds have a long history of big money signings flopping, and GH would have been mindful of this when he took over and saved the club from bankruptcy. Remember when all the opposition fans used to sing 'what a waste of money' at every game?

I'm not defending GH regards to recent recruitment, however - his YEP piece wound me up as well. I agree the emphasis has been too much on trying to winkle out bargain signings and the next Chris Hill from the Championship rather than paying the market rate for quality players.

[Fantastic Mr Catpiss]

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:12 pm  

from an opposition POV, i did wonder a few years ago how you were using your overseas spots, i think it was the season you had hauraki on your books and he was pretty dogshit for you, he was so far below the quality level that Leeds set, it was surprising.

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:25 pm  

Fantastic Mr Catpiss wrote:

from an opposition POV, i did wonder a few years ago how you were using your overseas spots, i think it was the season you had hauraki on your books and he was pretty dogshit for you, he was so far below the quality level that Leeds set, it was surprising.

He will have been to coin a phrase from Heathrington "affordable".He also distroyed Leeds at home when playing for the Crusaders.

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 3:44 pm  

Signings are always a gamble, particularly overseas players. There are some NRL players you know are going to be good value, Brent Webb, Buderus are in that category and others you take a bit of a punt on. Local knowledge helps a bit, Murray knew how good Brad Godden and Glanville were. The gamble sometimes pays off, Kylie being the obvious example and similar for Cuthbertson (who I thought was MOS his first season by a mile), Poching great, Hauraki gash, we got a couple of good seasons out of Furner, Ali was of course Ali, Scott Donald, but the fat kiwi Greg Eastwood was always going to let us down. But some signings have been just plain stupid. Brad Clyde was ruined when we signed him, two knee reconstructions resulting in persistent hamstring problems at the very end of his career, some other gaffs have been mentioned already. Ben Cross, Achurch, Vickery (the worst player I have ever seen in top flight rugby league). Segeyaro was never going to stay either.
However, on balance over the last 15 seasons since we built the championship side we've done okay, the real disappointment is not who we've signed it's what we've failed to produce from the academy.

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 3:57 pm  

DHM wrote:

Signings are always a gamble, particularly overseas players. There are some NRL players you know are going to be good value, Brent Webb, Buderus are in that category and others you take a bit of a punt on. Local knowledge helps a bit, Murray knew how good Brad Godden and Glanville were. The gamble sometimes pays off, Kylie being the obvious example and similar for Cuthbertson (who I thought was MOS his first season by a mile), Poching great, Hauraki gash, we got a couple of good seasons out of Furner, Ali was of course Ali, Scott Donald, but the fat kiwi Greg Eastwood was always going to let us down. But some signings have been just plain stupid. Brad Clyde was ruined when we signed him, two knee reconstructions resulting in persistent hamstring problems at the very end of his career, some other gaffs have been mentioned already. Ben Cross, Achurch, Vickery (the worst player I have ever seen in top flight rugby league). Segeyaro was never going to stay either.
However, on balance over the last 15 seasons since we built the championship side we've done okay, the real disappointment is not who we've signed it's what we've failed to produce from the academy.

My dad knew Maurice Bamford and he couldn't believe when we signed Cylde he told my dad don't expect too much from him he's done.

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:04 pm  

I think we’d mostly agree on which signings have been awful and which good. To be fair, Ferres SHOULD have been a good signing at the time - but for whatever reasons has been terrible overall.

What is hard to argue with though is the fact that nearly every other club has done better than us in recent years.

Saints with Barba and now Coote have had two of the best FBs in the whole competition.

Bill Tupou and David Fifta at Wakey stand out. Tupou outplayed all our expensive name centres earlier this year.

I know I’m cherry picking and other clubs have also made mistakes, but surely not as many as Leeds.

Cuthbo had great impact yes in his first year. Last 2 years not really contributed on the whole for me. Parcell also had a good first year.

Garbutt was good, I liked him. Don’t know about off the field stuff but I think we lost faith in his fitness as the main reason we let him go, which was a shame. But when did he sign - mid 2014...?

Re: Recruitment policy : Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:42 pm  

2015.

My point isn't about how hit and miss we've been over the years, but more since 2015. We were always going to drop off a bit but overseas signings were vital to staying competitive - much more important than when we had the core of the golden generation.

Our record since then generally sucks.