I find the money side of things interesting. I'd bet Greg Inglis with five young English lads would make most SL sides better than 6 average Aussies in their respective roles. We very rarely sign class Australian backs at their peak. Lyon was the only recent exception, and everyone wet themselves about how good he was, yet he's behind Hodges, Jennings and Inglis for Australia.

The ‘gap’ is getting bigger and I can’t see it shortening whilst the NRL is so far ahead of SL. They are switched on for 80 minutes every game, we can manage 60 at best. Mentally, thanks to the intensity week after week in the NRL (not to mention SOO), they are immense. Unfortunately people watch the WCC games and seriously think our game is as strong as theirs, get real, SL is light years behind the NRL and it won’t change unless we admit to it.

Pffffffffff!

And Shenton poleaxed himself.

Stop trying to expand the number of teams and diluting the quality there by reducing the weekly intensity.

Reduce the number of imports and increase the quality

FORCE clubs to spend a min amount of the Sky money on Jnr development

Accept that Australia has more money and more players and therefore will always be better! We might catch them and win the odd game ala NZ but reality is they have so much money pumping into the game we are never EVER going to better them consistently. It's harsh but reality i'm afriad.

I wish people would stop whinging. There are NO negatives here. Australia are a class act and they beat our kids - not only only that, it only happened in the last 15 minutes.

There are many, many, many positives to take out of this series.

- We have two very young halfbacks who should hopefully be the backbone of our England side for many years to come. Eastmond in particular looked very exciting, and both caused no end of problems.

- Our forwards punched holes in the Aussies and the New Zealanders for large periods. Sam Burgess is unbelievably agile for a man his size. I was astounded by the metres our forwards were making on Saturday - I don't think I've ever seen as good a performand from England/GB.

- The young lads WANTED it. Peter Fox's reaction to his tries against both Aus and NZ showed a man who wanted to play for his country.

- A fact many seem to have overlooked on these boards is that England kept Australia pointless for FIFTY minutes in Wigan. That's no mean feat for anyone, never mind a bunch of kids plus Morley and Peacock.

- We beat, convincingly too, the World Champions. Even if you take that with a pinch of salt, remember that NZ have never been pushovers due to most of them playing in the NRL week in, week out, and our track record against them has been patchy so say the least.

So, Peacock and Morley will be packing in soon. So? We've more than enough big forwards to bring in as replacements. Our lads proved that. having them present was beneficial to the team as a whole, for sure, but their individual performances were outshone by Graham (great going forward, but needs to stop pretending to be a halfback) and Big Eorl, who I thought was outstandingly good. Burgess is a monster.

On the other hand, I still say the Australian forwards aren't that special. It says something to you when they pick a short like Hannon, and an old man like Civoniceva. Lockyer can't go on forever, Slater for his flashes of brilliance still makes mistakes, and whilst yuo would rightly say that we would struggle to match Inglis on a 'man on man/individual quality' basis, he is still only ONE man, who still requires the right service from his halfbacks.

So, stop your moaning, and get excited for the future. I know I am.

a game like Inglis and co.

Top post Robinson.

In amongst all the b0110cks written about the game that is the best summary of what happened.

We got a solution? probably not or not an instant fix but here are a few of my views...

If you are building a team for a world cup then the last thing you need is a high profile tournament three years out, there was far tool much pressure on the team to make amends for a shocking world cup rather land looking to set good foundations. We will go out to Oz next year with the same attitude and it will repeat on an on.

We need to make the Four Nations once every two years at most, one of the other years would be the world cup the other a tour or a home nations deal.

That gives a coach a set plan, year one a home nations championship to blood all your young hopefuls with lower pressure on them to perform against the real starts of our game, year two a four nations to see just where you are in comparison to the rest, year three a tour to gets some real intensity and a team spirit, year four a world cup.

Aye

Lets face it, our players play in far too few 'intense' games. We've tried playing the Franch, home nations, yorks v lancs, but these just don't cut it.

So, IMO, the RFL would be better helping provide a consistent challenge for the youngsters who are coming through. Something like a championship against NRL sides each season, maybe our top 4 v their top 4. (I know they tried something like it in the 90's, but SL had only just gone pro then).

I agree this is the only way of getting more 'intense' games, but would the Aussies really go for it?

I thought we played better versus the Kiwis and we're not a million miles away. For 60mins Engalnd looked pretty good.

We can debate forever about what we need to do to improve but the big thing is to get more kids playing the game so we have more players to choose from. Only then will we get over the handicap of being the second or third tier football code in this country. If Australia had to compete with football and rugby union on the same levels as us I'd suggest that we'd murder them in international competition.

Until we can get the numbers up we need to do other things to maximise our potential, and to be fair we've started down that road.

Overseas quotas have been reduced. This should be down to five next year. Hopefully the RFL will eventually close the loopholes some clubs are using to bring more foreigners over. When a club like Leeds with their excellent junior system feels it has to have seven overseas players in 2010 something is wrong.

Rule changes will eventually have a positive effect if we stick with them. The slower PTB will eventually lead to players becoming more skilful as we move away from dummy half scooting. We also need to reduce the number of subs allowed so that players get used to playing for longer and are put under more pressure. That'll build up their endurance and coaches will have to work harder instead of relying on the bench to cover their backsides.

If we could come up with other changes to encourage flair then lets do it. The NRL makes rule changes without recourse to us and they generally serve to improve the players over there. They're already ahead of us in many respects so lets be proactive for a change and set the agenda.

Exactly how a lot of the SL clubs looked back in the 90's when we played SL v NRL. I can't remember, but didn't only 2 SL sides actually get a win each?

BUT, to be fair, I think some of the England players lost concentration during the long time it took to handle Shenton's injury. Unfortunately the Aussies remained more focussed and also gained their breath.

Get the kids playign in summer too when the conditions are more suited to the more skillful aspects of the game.

That's closer to the real issue, and Bullseye alluded to it too.

You can whinge all you like about coaches, selection and tactics but the UK simply does not produce young players of the standard that the Australian junior system does.

By the time young players make it into the pro ranks, coaches shouldn't have to be teaching them basic skills like passing accurately on the move. For whatever reason however, they are having to. Watch games in the Foundation Academy (or whatever the Under 16 level is called these days), there are kids sadly lacking in basics who have probably been regarded as stars in their amateur age groups.

Now that is an absolute essential. Get RL out of the cold and wet, and get the kids involved in conditions when they want to be outside.

Also, a huge push in schools. Organise league competitions for schools so that all the teams have to do is turn up, and you'd see a sudden increase in school playing numbers.

There are things we can do, but they require time and money.

When we start the season in February and end it in October that is hardly likely.

Kids' seasons are shorter, and anyway, cutting out November, December and January is worth the effort alone.

Not to mention gaining June, July and August.

I think the two plays that got bURGESS AWAY SHOWED THE POTNETIAL FOR THE FUTURE. oNCE OUR HALF BACKS GET USED TO PUTTING OUR TALENTED FORWARDS INTO HOLES AND WE GET A HOOKER WITH A DECENT BRAIN AND PASSING GAME WE WILL be a very different side.

It's impossible to do both of the things you suggest in your opening two paragraphs.

If we're going to push the game in schools then youth RL has to stay a Winter game; no school over the summer = no RL.

One way around this may be to play schools RL through the Winter and Amatuer youth RL through the summer, thus giving school kids year round RL.

I agree with your sentiments though, the only way we're going to get a stronger side is increasing the player base. To that end, the RFL are to be applauded for their recent in-roads into London's schools.

Speaking as a teacher, I know that the perception of many is that there's no school during summer. But actually we're only talking 6 weeks, in the hottest months, when a lot of kids go on holidays anyway. In addition, clubs (as opposed to schools) can keep going throughout the summer holidays. So moving kids' rugby to a spring/summer/autumn, rather than an autumn/winter/spring season, is perfectly feasible.

Speaking as a London teacher currently responsible for the best girls' team in the south of England (can you tell I'm proud of that ?) I can also say that while the RFL is offering coaching in patches of London and the SE (it's a big place for a few blokes to cover), what isn't yet available is any form of organised competition outside of the Carnegie schools, which doesn't begin for a while yet. All our fixtures have to be friendlies organised between schools bilaterally. I'm happy trying to do that, as I'm a RL nut, but most PE Departments are not run by RL nuts, and if you want them to engage in your sport, you have to make it easy for them. RU, by contrast, has well-established and well-administered schools' competitions which schools simply sign up to at the start of the year and then they have a goal and a structure to go along with.

Obviously as a girls' coach, I'm aware there's a real lack of teams out there, so I'm not being critical of the RFL, who understandably make boys' RL their top priority. But I'm not aware of any particular non-Carnegie competitive league competition for boys in London schools either.

Anyway, I digress. Getting youth rugby into summer is probably the single biggest short-term thing we could do to start helping youth development.

The trouble is that take out November, December and January then take out half of May, June, July and August for exams and holidays and you don't have a great deal left.

Do kids season's (in terms of games) need to mirror those at open age level?

What would be wrong with having (for example) a split junior season starting mid-March and running until the back end of May, then starting again early September until the end of October?

Kids who weren't away or taking exams could continue to train, maybe run some sevens tournaments over the summer so there isn't the same pressure to raise numbers during the holiday season.

No, but you run into age category problems where children in the same school year maybe playing at different levels, mind there is nothing to stop that changing to reflect that.

Only issue you do get is that when they move up into a club structure they will have to play in the times of the year when the weather isn't as good, if all you have is top of the ground players you have that to over come.