What?

You're mocking the Wigan walk

to be fair, brisbane are going to be right up there come the end of this season

TRY......The come back is on the cards, who says that English sides can't play for 80 minutes?

Once again another clinical performance from the Aussies.

Speed, power & class, the defensive structure is superb & they don’t try to score on every attacking set.

Oh well, maybe the Loiners can save face for our glorious game

.

Yep. Trying to score on every set annoys me, it happens far too much when British teams play the Aussies.

Doing the basics to a higher standard and more consistently. Wigan weren't at their best either but that was partly caused by very very quick and solid defence from Brisbane.

Thought O'Loughlin spoke well after the game, in contrast to Cunningham's strange comments last night.

One person who didn't speak well after the game was Steveo. That guy sure knows how to rant and even went to say our British players are unprofessional. Deluded!

Getting thrashed three times instead of once in a series of glorified friendlies is just what this game needs. Wait, hang on. How about eight times?

Yep. It's sad because I like him but he's proving how out of touch he is. He doesn't understand the game anymore.

The discussion was about how the Aussies have so many more kids playing the game and Stevo cited the lack of A teams as part of the reason for that.

Good on Tomkins at the end there though. I hold criticisms of Wane and his playing style but does anyone really think that a player in his team would get away with being unprofessional as Stevo was suggesting?

Glad it's his last year this year. Get a generic Sky presenter in for the presenter bits alongside a wider range of guests. Use Carney and Wells as they are now. And get rid of Barrie & Terry. Eddie's ok if he just sticks to the role of basic, no-frills commentator. It's also constantly suprised me how someone like Eddie, who has watched, reported on and clearly loves the game for so long, knows so little about it.

Getting beaten several times in a row didn't seem to hurt the NRL.

If you want to get better you've got to play the best teams. Not to mention the publicity it provides.

You'd need that level of intensity throughout the season though. Leigh proved it last year.

People seem to think we need to improve the game from the top downward when actually it should be the other way round from the grassroots.

As for the publicity I doubt it would get even a few lines in the national papers other than NRL spanks SL's best.

A few times is better than nothing. It provides you with a higher standard to try and achieve and when you do achieve them v an NRL team it allows you to see that you can be that extra 1 or 0.5% better.

I'd say we need both. We need the top end to be more intense and provide more publicity and we need a total and utter restructure of the grass roots, because currently, in my opinion, the amateur game is failing Rugby League in every respect.

Leeds were on BBC 1 this morning. More coverage than on most Grand Final days.

Agreed. The amateur game is obviously the best way to grow the sport since there are tons of teams right across the country and the ones in untapped areas should be advertising like crazy, even if that means just getting a couple of interviews or adverts in local papers, maybe getting the players to hand out leaflets in town centres on a Saturday or something like that. All these clubs need to do is do simple things like that, encourage people to go to a game with the draw of it being free and put on open days saying that people can go down there and just have a go and maybe discover some good talent. This is not rocket science and it doesn't cost much to get some leaflets or posters printed up or call the local paper to arrange an interview or something, maybe get on the radio.

I saw that bbc feature this morning. Any coverage is good news for the sport and there is slowly more exposure trickling in i have noticed, even if the bbc breakfast presenter called it the world cup...

For us to catch up to the NRL we need to do the following:-

1. Get rid of the salary cap. Pay players from here and Aus whatever you like.
2. Get rid of the quota/non-fed rules. There aren't enough top quality English Kids being produced yet.
3. Play less regular season games
4. Reduce the amount of sky money each club gets and plough it into grass roots to get more kids playing.

All this is my opinion. No doubt someone will come along and give lots of reasons why this shouldn't happen.

But honestly, what did people expect. Saints have looked poor this season, Wigan have looked poor despite winning and I suspect the Leeds game will go the same way. There is a lot of rebuilding going on at the top teams and it looks like that improvement is not going to come overnight.....in my opinion

No, can't argue with much of that. Unless the clubs can show that they're spending a certain percentage of that Sky £ on grassroots themselves rather than be given less.

Plus I don't think we need fewer regular season games as such. I think with the race to, initially, finish in the top 8 half way through the season and then a race to finish in the top 4 by the end of it should drive up the intensity of the season from February to September after a few years of getting used to it. I think has been missing for too long because the play-offs were too easy to get into and you could coast all season and there were too many play-off games (I mean you could lose in he play-offs and get a second chance and still go on to win the GF in the past, I'm glad that's gone!) so the intensity of SL for too many years has just been about a month at the end of the season, not an entire season.

1. Surely this will lead to more bradford/Wakefield/Widnes like collapses as team attempt to compete with the have alls, leaving a handful of teams that can survive. Not sure how that grows the game just makes the pool smaller.
2. More Young British players losing out to Australian players who aren't quite good enough over there. - not sure how that improves the domestic game- will make the gap bigger as there will again be a smaller pool of British players to chose from.
3. Agree
4. Agree

Surely, the fact that the Australian game has got far more money and investors in their game is the biggest factor?
we could do almost anything to try and close the gap, but the simple fact is they have much much more money to put into the game.

also despite it being a "regional" game in the Australian sense, how many people play the game in those regions compared to our whole country?

My thoughts to.

I think this year it's more down to the SL teams involved being weaker than they were last season. They are three teams going through transition. I think it's more a quirk of timing than Saints, Wigan, and Leeds being in crisis. There's certainly an argument to say that SL needs to pull its socks up with regards to competition quality, but the signs are there already that teams outside the top four are getting competitive. At the moment, this is what has caused the current feeling in some quarters because our top sides have struggled so far at this early stage of the season. It's not that the competition is declining, it's a lot to do with other teams becoming competitive at the same time as the top teams having their own problems.

The issue is at junior level. Not enough players in the junior game and rules actively pushing them out.
E.g My lad has been playing since he was 6 in the "same" team. He goes into u12s this year and he's the last one still there who's come right through. Most haven't gone to another league side but have given up playing league altogeer- a few have gone to union (asthe facilities are better?) They have just 13 players signed for the season ATM. Another who "may" come back when the union season has finished and a lad who is signed for Bradford city and is only allowed to play for approx 8 weeks in the football off season.
Three other local u12s either have folded or are likely to due to lack of numbers BUT due to junior league rules my sons team are only allowed to take on 3 of their players as they are classed as transfers- regardless that the teams have folded. So unless we get players who haven't played for a team last year his team will have no subs for the entire year and those players who's teams have folded will likely fall out of the game! Well done those in charge 20+ youngsters lost

Even if we get thrashed by the Aussie sides, it has to happen every year just to provide realism through the spin.

The reasons why we lose are as obvious as they are unpalatable to some, and we wont address those ussues because vested interests within the game push their own priorities and that goes for the top, middle and bottom of the game.

The fact is that the game in this country has been convinced that because the top clubs are so much better than the middle and lower SL sides, and light years better than championship sides that they are well run, fact is they arent. They are average made to look brilliant by being surrounded by dross.

The other fact is, we arent ever trying to address those issues. This season we will have fewer academies than last, and last year we had fewer than before.

Since 2013 we have upped the quota and have more overseas players and fewer british players playing without upping the SC so we have simply bought in 28 year old dross because its quicker and easier than training a 20 year old up to and past that level.

Amateur participation is falling and the RFL have proven so bad at administering it that sport england money has been diverted away from them

but not to worry, leigh v hull kr in front of 4k is the silver bullet the game needs.

Our schoolboy teams regularly beat the Aussies so it's not like our kids aren't good enough. What happens to them after that is a mystery because rarely it transitions into playing regular full-time, top class super league.

Last nights heavy defeat for Wigan highlighted the gulf in class with down under once again, particularly at half back and fullback where Brisbane had too much pace and all round skills and decision making ability which successfully exploited their multi-player plays with such great effect. Currently SL seems to have a dearth of quality at halfback and great predictability in general back play. SL urgently needs an injection of class.

Often there is an age gap between the two teams.
Sometimes it our 17 year olds playing there 15-16 year olds.

Interesting. Did not know that, thanks.