I dont really care what the ins and outs of it are. The knights have developed these kids, they have spent countless time, money and resources helping them get to where they are now, and they deserve to be rewarded for that investment by having these talented kids ply their trade for the Knights... and the system should be helping them do that.
Currently all the system does is help big market clubs use and abuse small markets clubs. But then i think that's exactly what the NRL wants
The knights recruitment surely has to play a role in this, Bennett in particular should take some blame. If you're long term goal is to bring through these young players then surely poaching Boyd as your marquee player in the position these guys are going to fill isn't such a good idea.
Boyd is probably the knights highest payed player and is playing in the position i'm assuming one of the brothers is going to play in. You can't have everyone and at some point you have to make some hard choices.
Whose fault is it that the knights had locked down the positions that the brothers were being groomed to play in? You can't expect them to just wait around forever.
Which small clubs are the ones being hard done by out of interest? The Knights for all the complaining have still managed to do quite well for themselves over the years. Despite all the whining i think they're pretty well set up for the future too. The raiders are an obvious one and it's hard to argue but sh*t it's hard to have much sympathy when they do dome stuff like signing Campese to a lifetime contract. Raiders are run like absolute crap and that has played a big role in where they are now.
The cowboys are a small market club and they seem to be able to consistently stay competitive (in recent times anyway, although post Thurston will be interesting). It's hard to call any Sydney club a small market club really.
In general if you look at all the clubs that usually complain about things like this so much of it comes back to terrible management. Raiders, knights, tigers, parra are all examples of this. If you're club is run by incompetent people recruitment and retention becomes all that much harder.
The salary cap isn't a guarantee that every team will be competitive and be able to keep their juniors. There is still a responsibility on the clubs to run their club in a competent manner.
I agree with everyone saying that we should encourage juniors to stay with their clubs, it's one of the great things about the NRL. I don't want us to go down the road of other big sports where playing for your junior club just isn't a thing at all. I like the tribal nature of the game. I just think some of the blame is aimed at the wrong people and some of it is just misplaced.
