'in ru well have the money to sign their best backs like quade cooper, or some all blacks'

RL will have the money for players where money is not the number one incentive for those players to consider swapping codes. Cooper is a good example - right now he could (if he was not contracted) earn more money in Europe than any NRL club could pay him even if the most optimistic guess at a new TV contract proves accurate. If he comes to league, it's because he wants to play league not because it will make him richer. Where money is the principal issue for the player, NRL will be hard-pressed to go head-to-head with ARU over players the latter wants to keep. It has no chance in those circumstances against Europe, and probably Japan as well.

OTOH, every year good to very good RU schoolboy / age-group players come over to league for the simple reason that the number of pro and semi-pro RL clubs offering contracts utterly dwarfs the Oz RU equivalent. This is RL's big advantage. The advent of the Melbourne Rebels may peg this back a bit given time, but only a bit...

It was also said that a great many of the 90 would fit right in.......you showed us 11 over 2 years......hardly 90 is it? Fact would be about 50% or more to be many....do 50% of NRL imports return to NRL starting line ups? Didn't think so.


He was offered 1 year by the cowboys and nobody else was interested............hardly a ringing endorsement....but hey, we can agree to differ on his ability now


I am not wrong on the mason issue......my opinion may differ from yours but that doesn't make me wrong. On the NRL-ESL-NRL point...unless you can name the many players...and by many I mean over 50% who walk back into the NRL after time in ESL, I don't believe am wrong there either.....

For gods sake, you don't build a team with all those players, you add a few here or there.

My god you are scrapping the bottom trying to prove a point.

Give up.

There are plenty of players over in the UK and France that will come back when and if we get new teams.

FACT: in the last two years approx 40% of ex NRL players who signed to SL in the previous 3 years have returned to the NRL. Now if you want to describe that as "many" is up to you, it does show that your comment that NRL players who move to SL are not good enough to go back and play NRL is a myth. You think only 10 players out of the entire contingent of overseas players in SL could get a game in the NRL, that is also a myth as is shown by players that have done it and continue to do it year after year. Lets see come 2013 how many return shall we.

re Mason, you seem to be on your own on that one!

My point is that the standard would take a dip if the competition saw a large influx of the players currently running around SL. A high % of these players are barely good enough for SL let alone the NRL. Most are here because SL coaches are too lazy to develop talented young players preferring to play very average NRL players who have been developed by better coaches in Aus.

The whole point of the franchise system in SL was to increase the quantities of GB qualified players by removing the threat of relegation - sadly we now have as many if not more non GB qualified players than we have ever had.

Wigan had a whole backline of overseas players when Noble was there, they still had 5/6 under McGuire!!!
Roberts, Richards, Tommy, Carmont, Phelps, Bailey

The franchising system has only been in use for a handful of years. You won't start seeing benefits for a while yet.