To each and every one of you, despite the fact that you are a bunch of over the hill Australian NRL rejects and girlfriend beaters you really stepped up and showed Australia really can put a bunch of Aussies together in a place nobody has ever heard of and give a good account of yourselves.



Clint Greenshields.
Adam Mogg.
Jason Croker.
Steven Bell.
Shane Perry.
Casey McGuire.
Greg Bird.
Dane Carlaw.


Kane Bentley.
Jason Ryles.
Andrew Bentley.

I look forward to the addition of more scrap heap Aussies pulling up in the Sounth of France in 2010.

Greg Bird is the best player in Superleague. Me and him are gonna be mates.

Doubt it, but hey, if it makes you happy then go for it.

What is it with the seriously bad redneck haircuts though?

Feck me, if you left an animal looking like that you'd be out of your sheepshearing job in no time flat!

And that Caisey McGuire has a face even his mum would have a hard time loving!

Monty Betham spotted a weakness in McGuires looks and did the right thing by trying to rearrange his face free of charge, some might say Monty didnt quite finish the job, Caisey may disagree however as he spent several weeks after removing a brown sticky mucus from his genetal area.

What has made come up with this. Is it down to the fact that you thought you were going to hammer them but they gave you a real scare and if things went their way a bit more they could have emerged with the victory. There was a blatant knock on from Webb that led to a try and I thought that Silverwood should have gone to the video ref to check McGuire was onside. Maybe you are part of the minority of Leeds fans that are just plain arrogant and jumped on the bandwaggon. Ok so Greg Bird may be a woman beater but he was the best player on the pitch tonight seconded by Mogg, an NRL "reject" who had your defence in tatters at times. Another thing that got on my nerves was the constant niggling and laying on in the tackle. It also made me smile to see some of your players get smashed and then their facial expressions after. You can't know much about Rugby if you think that Bird, Mogg, Greenshields etc could not hold a place in the NRL.

Without a shadow of a doubt, class apart.

Class is not the first adjective I would use to describe someone like Bird, great player though. We couldn't handle him and Mogg.

Bird has played the last few weeks with an almost state of origin intensity. I for one hope he stays in SL next year, despite his dodgy off the field record.

I also look forward to the prospect of playing
Amos Roberts
George Carmont
Pat Richards
Tim Smith
Thomas Leuluai
Mark Riddell
Iafeta Paleaaesina
Phil Bailey
Harrison Hansen
Cameron Phelps

The OP does have a point doesn't he lets be honest.

Because he's a low rent troll desperate for attention.

That a club that has been full-time professional for less than four years isn't quite in a position to field a competitive, mostly French first XIII?

No, not really. There are plenty of other clubs for whom criticism of their reliance on overseas players is far more justified, some of whom claim to be from supposed "goldmines" of RL talent.

I thought Clarke made a good point last night. They've been going 4 years now and have debuts to 4 players, none of whom were French, all of whom were Australian.

Is that really why they were brought into Super League?

Isn't Bird going to be outta contract at end of this season?

Gotta agree he looked class last night, would like to see him with a full pre season behind him. Naturally his fitness has limited him this season.

They should have really had some kids in place at 14 - 16 year old so they should be brining some in by now IMO

you only have to look at Ryan Hall who was a late comer.

My comment was just based on his rugby skills, for the record imo he should not even be playing in Super League.

I agree with the argument that they shouldn't be a holiday home for Origin Test players or a haven from UK Immigration officials but at the same time, it does French players no good to subject them to first team rugby if they clearly aren't ready for it. Whilst you could argue that they have given debuts to four Aussies this year, in the past four years they have introduced some clearly talented French players to regular pro RL.

I couldn't make a strong judgement on what the strength of the playing pool in the French game is outside the Catalans first 18 other than from what I've seen in the French national team, and that wasn't pretty.

I suppose the difficulty is that there isn't a pro structure in the French domestic game. Given that French clubs are often found wanting in the early stages of the Challenge Cup, the pro talent pool evidently needs to expand. We now have two French clubs in that position, which is a positive step.

As I said, this is a club that, whilst it has roots going back much longer, is essentially four years old. The structures that were in place at Les Catalans pre-Super League will be a world away from what they are now. It isn't going to start producing a "production line" of talent straight away.

It's not that easy though is it. Pre, Super League, the club was largely semi-pro. The things that work in semi-pro sport very rarely work in the same way once you become full-time. You can't just go full-time and "switch on" a youth development programme that immediately starts bringing kids through.

Despite this however, the Dragons have still given pro debuts to Cyril Stacul, Dimitri Pelo, Thomas Bosc, Sébastien Raguin, Grégory Mounis, Jean-Philippe Baile, Cyril Gossard, Vincent Duport, Julien Touxagas, Florian Quintilla, Rémi Casty, Frédéric Vaccari, Mathieu Griffi, Younes Khattabi - and that's just the ones that I can be bothered to look up. Look at that list and tell me how many club-grown players Wakefield, Salford or Huddersfield have given debuts to in the last four seasons.

There is no such thing as a "production line" of talent. Clubs will go through periods where the youth coming out of the system just isn't good enough. Leeds supporters who were watching the club pre-2003 will know full-well that our club had a reliance on expensive Aussies before we actually got a group of excellent young players who were clearly good enough to form the basis of a champion team. To say that Catalans or Celtic should be able to just turn up with a team full of local players is just fanciful.

I can't disagree with any of that and I know very little about the French game but I still find it dissapointing nonetheless that this season they appear to have gone backwards in that particular department.

The core of the team is still Greenshields, Mogg, McGuire and Bird with only Bosc from france chipping in IMO

all of which would walk in any SL team and be able to carry average to good players.

Greenshields - Super League dream team 2008
Bell - Won the NRL grand final in 2008
Mogg - Played 2 times for Queensland in 2006, Super League dream team 2007
Perry - Won the 2006 NRL grand final
McGuire - Won the 2006 NRL grand final, played 2 times for Queensland in 2005
Croker - Won the 2000 World Cup, won the 1994 NSWRL grand final, played 5 times for Austalia in 2000, played 5 times for New South Wales from 1993 - 2001
Carlaw - Won 2 NRL grand finals in 2000 and 2006, played 6 times for Australia from 2001 - 2003, played 13 times for Queensland from 2001 - 2007
Ryles - Played 12 times for Australia from 2001 - 2005, played 15 times for New South Wales from 2001 - 2007
Bird - Playes 2 times for Australia from 2007 - 2008, played 4 times for New South Wales from 2007 - 2008

Hardly 'scrap heap' Aussies, eh ?

Only 6 of them played last night (Greenshields, Mogg, McGuire, Carlaw, Ryles and Bird).
3 of which have now qualified for France (Greenshields, Mogg and McGuire).
Kane and Andrew Bentley have lived in France for 14 years (Kane is a French international, Andrew hasn't played all season).

Surprising then that we won.
Totally agree about Bird, without the court case there's no doubt he wouldn't be within 10,000 miles of Superleague.

Not really.

We will play against brilliant individuals that will cause us problems all the time. Doesn't mean we can't beat the teams they play for.

With the exception of Peacock we couldnt handle the forwards either, Mogg was sublime and his standing up of Senior on three occasions was sublime, Bird is a world class player wasted in SL, he needs to exit stage right and get back to the NRL.