Quote bramleyrhino="bramleyrhino"Personally, I'd argue that a "draft" would be worse for addressing our talent pool issues than the current system.
As things stand, we have the best clubs, with the best youth infrastructure, sweeping up the cream of the talent. At these clubs, the players get the best coaching, in the best facilities, and the best academic support (should they not reach their on-field potential). These clubs also have a good record on blooding that talent.
What a draft system is effectively proposing is to send the pick of the talent to inferior clubs, with inferior youth coaching, inferior facilities and inferior academic support. This, in turn, harms their career development. These clubs have also, historically, had poor records when it comes to exposing young talent to first team rugby.
Leeds, St Helens and Wigan don't have the best young players because the best young players only play for Stanningley, St Pats or Blackbrook; they have the best young players because the actively go out, find them, and train them in suitable facilities. Any SL club could do that if it had the inclination to do so.
As it stands, the better, proactive clubs get to keep the better players. Eventually, some of that talent trickles down to other clubs (so in effect, those clubs are investing in players for others to see the return); one of the successes, you could argue, of the salary cap.
I don't see how sending this year's BARLA player of the year to London Broncos is good for the player, the national team, or the Super League as a product.'"
There is sense in such an standpoint, however I don’t think it addresses a draft in the way a draft would actually work.
The way I would see it working would be the RFL through a selection of numerous amateur clubs with access to better coaching and facilities funnelling the best talent to, at 17, the lower league clubs for 2 years. At 19 a player can declare himself available for the draft. If he isn’t drafted he returns to his lower league club and can declare himself available for any draft up until 24 when his contract can be bought out by any club at any time. In terms of a player needing more experience before SL he would continue to be affiliated to that club and available for them whenever he isn’t needed by the SL side.
I would agree that Leeds, Saints, Wigan et al, have the best youth systems because they have gone out and created them. I don’t agree that that means we as a game have the best system to maximise our talent.
Leeds, Saints and Wigan can only bring in so many players, they can only bring through so many players and they can only field so many players. In fact Leeds, Saints Wigan aren’t set up to or focussed on bring through 10-15 players every year because in the most part that would be useless to them. They want one or two coming through most years, 3 or 4 in some the rest are cast off and don’t have the time and effort invested in them. Are Leeds going to put the same time and effort in to The centre opposite Kallum Watkins as they did Kallumn?. The clubs who were best would still be rewarded but the job they would be doing would simply change to ‘polishing the diamond’ rather than digging it out
Its not about simply sending a young player to London, its about the huge change and improvement in youth development it would necessitate. The RFL would need to take control of youth development up until 17, personally I don’t think this is a bad thing, I don’t see a whole lot of benefit for pro clubs being involved at the very lowest level, and what benefit I do so could easily not only be repeated but expanded on by a national pathway.
For example, kids are probably pretty happy and find it pretty useful to have contact with the senior pro’s that’s a good thing, but we could not only have the RFL employ senior pro’s to work with these kids, we could more easily expose more kids to the skills and knowledge of the best. Clubs probably have maybe 6 young halves on their books at any one time? Its not cost effective to have Andrew Johns teach a master class to 6 kids. The 70 best in the country? It becomes a lot more realistic.
Another advantage of going through the national pathway than a club one is the prioritisation of the players development. The one and only consideration regarding that players development is that they become the best player they can be for their career, at a club, and this applies to all clubs, players are expected to fill in as and when needed, think of how much time Carl Ablett spent at centre as a young player when he is an out an out ball playing second rower. Ablett lost development time in his eventual position, not only in gaining skills and experience there but in the training and physical training he had to do to fill in there. Under a draft system Ablett would have trained to be a ball playing second rower, played lower league as a ball playing second rower, and come in to a team who needed a ball playing second rower.
Its about making sure the development of the player is prioritised, its about bringing each cohort through in a cogent way that gives more of them the best chance of a career in RL, its about helping them become the best player they can be and getting them playing where they are needed to be.
Its about changing the focus from Leeds having a successful youth academy for Leeds, to the game having a successful pathway for everyone.
So yes throwing a young player at London doesnt really achieve much, but having a pathway where more players achieve more of their potential will give us more better players to choose from, and more better players playing SL.
