I don't think we have a SL club that can put out two full teams, so the title of 'Reserves' is a bit of a misnomer (officially only Dan Brewin and Luke Thomas were our only Reserves last year). So if you followed the Reserve games you would see that three quarters of the team were in fact our U19's, and some of those were not even in their final year. So the idea appears to have been to provide a challenge to those Academy players who need more experience than an U19 game can provide. I suspect that the format will have been viewed largely as a success, but as Smithy points out there is certainly a significant gap in the physicality of the SL game and U19's. I guess there is no easy way to avoid that if you want to expose and up and coming youngster. Not sure that games in the Championship is the answer either as from what I see it is played a bit slower, but its just as rough.
Just to mention also, I think all but two of the newly promoted Scholarship players got a game in the Reserves and Jake Thewliss played a lot of matches (and featured in the Academy Roses games). He seemed to start the season looking very lively, and it may be just my imagination but seemed to be pretty jaded towards the end of the season. The coaches will know far better than me, but this may also be the downside of asking a junior to step up a level (or two).
