This year saw the end of annual promotion and relegation from the Super League, a brave move for a professional sport in this country.

Instead, teams were given a three-year licence in which to build their club without having to spend most of their time and money in a scrap for survival.

Clubs could invest in their facilities and their youth development in the knowledge that they would still receive their central distribution of money next year.

Lunt: moving up and making his mark

It has often been said that clubs would now give more opportunity to their own youngsters, and become less reliant on older, experienced ones from overseas. But is that the case?

I am indebted to our researcher at Sky Sports, Ian Proctor, for his work and the brilliant piece of analysis that he's done on Clubs in Super League over the last five years. He's looked at the number of debuts given by clubs to non-overseas (i.e. local British) players in Super League for 2005 to 2009.

At the bottom of this page is the full list of all of the clubs and their breakdown year by year. Some clubs only featured for one season i.e. Widnes and Leigh whilst the Catalans are, of course, a French issue but you will see the general point.

The major conclusion to draw from this research is that the end of relegation has not prompted a flood of home produced debutants in 2009. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of players from the lower divisions.

Shaun Lunt is the most obvious example having moved from Workington to Huddersfield, and scoring a try in the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley, but you could also highlight James Ford at Castleford, Dominic Maloney at Hull, Adam Sidlow at Salford, Alex Brown at Huddersfield, Luke Gale and Ryan Esders at Harlequins. All of these served their apprenticeship below the elite level in this country.

This shift is perhaps a result of the recruitment decisions made by John Kear in previous years when he signed Fox, Golden and Blaymire from York.

Each club needs to make a detailed analysis at their own club to see if their 'Return on Investment' of Youth Development is satisfactory. After spending more than £100,000 a year on junior players, is it good enough to get one or two players a year progressing to your First Team?

The St Helens Chairman recently called for the game to speed up the process of encouraging club-trained player production. Next season, a club only needs to have seven out of their top 25 as 'Club-trained' i.e. having been at the club for more than three years from under the age of 18.

For many clubs, these players will wear jerseys 19 to 25 and act as fringe players when injuries occur. In 2011 the number of club-trained increases to eight but this is not enough in my opinion.

It would be sensible, now that there is no relegation, and that club-trained players are, on average, cheaper than non-club trained that the clubs urgently discuss increasing these numbers to perhaps 11 in 2010 and 12 in 2011.

That old chestnut about the threat of relegation forcing clubs into recruiting from Overseas can no longer be used and I believe that we need to speed up the regulations to further encourage a club's own player production.

NON-OVERSEAS SUPER LEAGUE DEBUTANTS BETWEEN 2005 AND 2009

Last five seasons - British (or French) Super League debutants

SEASON BY SEASON - non-overseas debutants

SEASON BY SEASON - Clubs giving most/least Super League debuts

*Three clubs - Bradford, Hull FC and Leeds - have given at least two players Super League debuts in every one of the past five seasons

* St Helens' use of 11 debutants in 2006 is somewhat distorted by the fact they included seven players who never wore their colours again in Super League - in their game away at Catalans a week before the Cup Final.

* New clubs promoted into Super League (Leigh in 2005 and Hull KR in 2007) plus Catalans (2006) and Celtic (2009) have, by necessity, afforded most debuts in recent SL seasons.

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