Local players

jamesgould

jamesgould

Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Staff member
Admin
I'm interested in how the idea that we should only have local players in our side has come from?

It definitely wasn't there in 1988, we recruited from far and wide, and our inaugural captain was a Kiwi.

It wasn't there in Mal Reilly's time in charge. It definitely wasn't there in Warren Ryan's stint, we had quite a few signings in that period ... like any other club.

It seems to have come in under Michael Hagan's time in charge, because it was brought up when Brian Smith sacked our under-performers that they should stay there because they were juniors, or in Kirk Reynoldson's case, had played for us for a year or two.

I think since then a separate idea that if a player plays first grade for us for a year or two then he is here for life if he wants to be has become part of the club as well.

I just don't know how this idea for so ingrained into the club, when it wasn't there when we were any good, but is now such a seemingly crucial part of how the club is run.
 
Really I'm fine with them supporting local talent; we've got a great nursery that the club needs to take better advantage of and identify talent better. However, what's just ****ing me off and leaving me with zero confidence is how they're basically saying they won't be filling the gaps and they're going to fall on them completely.
 
Our household names are all from the Hunter or Mid north coast. Bedsy, the Johns brothers all those players from our 'glory' years.

Chief and his media career hasn't helped - all this 'the people of Newcastle love their footy and home grown talent'. Still gets carried on in the media today.

You wouldn't read about it! A country town loves their footy and have this we need to have a home grown talent mentality. Naturally we are going to recruit more locals than a inner Sydney club. We have good juniors and always have, but other clubs have good juniors too.

So naturally the media eat it up when a 'blue collar' player that comes from the region like Clydesdale or Randall they continue the ageing tale that we love the locals.
 
It's really a simple equation; secure the local talent (that's good enough to be in the NRL) and import quality players to fill the gaps and strengthen what we have. That's what we've built the club on and is the formula that works.
 
Newcastle started RL in this country.

Myth has it that Dally Messenger started it in Sydney - but Newcastle was one of the original sides in 1908, and because we had a huge number of poms from the north of England in the area due to the coal mining industry just taking off and being manned by poms from places like Hull, Wigan, Leeds etc, we were able to field a side with many guys who had played "Northern League" before (it had been going for 13 years in the north of England). Our guys showed most of the Sydney players how to play.

In 1910 we started our own competition, and till the 1950s our teams were very nearly as good as teams from Sydney.

The two greatest players of all time, Clive Churchill and Andrew Johns, both come from Newcastle.

Over 100 players from Newcastle have played for Australia.

We have about a million people in the Newcastle catchment area if you count everywhere from Gosford to the far North coast, and those are some of the the strongest league areas in the world.

Frankly, if Newcastle can't produce it's own players, it's because we aren't making the most of our potential.
 
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jamesgould said:
I'm interested in how the idea that we should only have local players in our side has come from?

It definitely wasn't there in 1988, we recruited from far and wide, and our inaugural captain was a Kiwi.

It wasn't there in Mal Reilly's time in charge. It definitely wasn't there in Warren Ryan's stint, we had quite a few signings in that period ... like any other club.

It seems to have come in under Michael Hagan's time in charge, because it was brought up when Brian Smith sacked our under-performers that they should stay there because they were juniors, or in Kirk Reynoldson's case, had played for us for a year or two.

I think since then a separate idea that if a player plays first grade for us for a year or two then he is here for life if he wants to be has become part of the club as well.

I just don't know how this idea for so ingrained into the club, when it wasn't there when we were any good, but is now such a seemingly crucial part of how the club is run.
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Its idiocy. Seriously idiocy.

And that's from me!
 
Defender1 said:
It's really a simple equation; secure the local talent (that's good enough to be in the NRL) and import quality players to fill the gaps and strengthen what we have. That's what we've built the club on and is the formula that works.
Click to expand...
It sounds simple, but for every Ben Kennedy we have bought we have wasted money on 4 Shannon McDonnells, Micheal Dobsons, Ben Cross etc etc etc.
Brian Smith brought in whole teams of imports in his time here, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the amount that were any good.

Our imports this year have been very good. I'd say 3 out of 3 are worth the money we paid and look to have long futures in front of them, but in the past we'd be lucky to get one in 5 who weren't overpaid and overhyped.
 
Ben Cross wasn't a waste it's just that he was our only prop that had a dig and had 5 blokes smashing him each time he took a hit up.

Poor guy had more concussions then just about anyone!
 
You know Billy the Newcastle Rebels in 1908 used to play all games in Sydney, and travelled to and from by steamer but after a couple of years they could not keep this up, and hold down a full time job. Newcastle's first game was against, if memory serves me well, against Glebe.
 
Billy said:
It sounds simple, but for every Ben Kennedy we have bought we have wasted money on 4 Shannon McDonnells, Micheal Dobsons, Ben Cross etc etc etc.
Brian Smith brought in whole teams of imports in his time here, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the amount that were any good.

Our imports this year have been very good. I'd say 3 out of 3 are worth the money we paid and look to have long futures in front of them, but in the past we'd be lucky to get one in 5 who weren't overpaid and overhyped.
Click to expand...

I rated most of his imports. But they could only play under him. Ben Cross, Antonio Kafusi, Mitchell Sargent etc weren't bad buys - We just didn't have any other forwards to share the workload.
 
member 2299 said:
You know Billy the Newcastle Rebels in 1908 used to play all games in Sydney, and travelled to and from by steamer but after a couple of years they could not keep this up, and hold down a full time job. Newcastle's first game was against, if memory serves me well, against Glebe.
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They travelled by train. In 1908 the train trip between Newcastle and Sydney was a few minutes shorter than it is now.
The steamer trip was about 5 hours if the weather was good, but if the weather turned bad you could spend 3 days sitting off the harbour waiting for the seas to drop.
 
Billy said:
It sounds simple, but for every Ben Kennedy we have bought we have wasted money on 4 Shannon McDonnells, Micheal Dobsons, Ben Cross etc etc etc.
Brian Smith brought in whole teams of imports in his time here, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the amount that were any good.

Our imports this year have been very good. I'd say 3 out of 3 are worth the money we paid and look to have long futures in front of them, but in the past we'd be lucky to get one in 5 who weren't overpaid and overhyped.
Click to expand...

You just about hit the nail on the head... We shouldn't be bringing guys like that to the Club. I agree with you, we have a heap of local guys that can do the job those guys do within the squad. My argument is that, we only buy the Ben Kenned's etc to complement the local's we develop.

Surely those in the know are watching our junior's (Flegg, Matts and Holden Cup etc) and taking note of what area's we're strong and weak. If we look short in an area, ie front row, buy the best 18 - 20 year old front rower/s we can and bring them through our systems. Then at NRL level we can concentrate on only recruiting high quality players to complement what we have?
 
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