[urlhttp://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=rleague/09/02/01/RUGBYL_England_Nightlead.html[/url

[iVeteran Leeds centre Keith Senior has revealed there was a "big divide" between the Rhinos players and their arch rivals from St Helens during England's disastrous World Cup campaign.[/i

And there is me thinking we failed due to us just being $hit

We're always going to have this problem when Leeds players get picked for England. It's called the language barrier.

Aye up lad thas nattering rubbish, nowt wrong wit way we talk ovver ere.

BTW is that the legend Sebastien Tellier as your Avatar?

Close. It's a pic of tb from the 60s.

Well that comes across, IMO , as they couldn't care less about the team as a whole, the international game and even less about the fans, especially those who paid their hard earned to go support them.

Is he grey now

I think this shows the problem with having 2 clubs who provide the majority of the players for the squad, if there was a more even spread of players from all clubs then there would probably be less tension between those from different clubs.

It won't be much of a problem if GB have any run outs in the next few years with Crusaders providing 90% of the squad.

[size=17which little fishy will bite first[/size

It makes me pretty angry reading this, it was a World Cup FFS, surely they could have put aside any differences and rivalries, the chance of WC glory doesn't come around too often.

Every other country seems to be able to avoid these kind of issues

A lot of the blame has to go to Smith and the coaching staff, surely they could see the tensions? Something shoulda been done to sort it.

Does any other country have a squad so dominated by 2 domestic teams?

Another interesting quote from the same article: [i"but Senior, who today confirmed his retirement from the international game"[/i

Not sure who will replace him. Shenton? Yeaman?

ATKINS!

You're right, thats a massive problem but it's still hard to accept that they couldn't get over it, for their own sake if nothing else



Probably the only comparable situation is the French. They have their Superleague players and the rest from their domestic league. They wouldn't see each other as rivals, but there would be a distinct divide.

Maybe they had similar issues

They spend all season knowing these players are their biggest rivals, I guess that isn't easy to turn on and off.

To me its yet more of an example of why we need every club developing its young players to stop such domination from 2 teams occurring again.

Arch rivals? sorry but i always thought Bradford were our arch rivals not St Helens.

At the moment (or at the time surrounding the World Cup) which team is your biggest threat - Saints or Bradford?

Rival(s) - definition [iOne that equals or almost equals another in a particular respect.[/i

I don't think so

Leeds and Saints games are England’s State of Origin IMO.

You couldn’t ask for a better comparison. But yeah I hope its all sorted out come the four nations and we should win because IMO we have the best players in the world over here atm.

Its just petty pride that’s stopping us from dominating the international stage at country level like we do at club level with Leeds.

It looks to me as though we won't have the Leeds/Saints domination again this season.

Saints may not be as strong as previous seasons, Wigan look like they could challenge, so could Bradford and Warrington if things go right



Huddersfield look like a team on the up and Hull should be back in the top 6.

Maybe I'm dreaming, or at least being overly-optimistic, but it's going to be very competitive this season IMO, and the England squad for the 4 nations could look very different

I will be expecting the likes of Sam Burgess, Sean O Loughlin and Gareth Raynor to be back in the international set up next year depending on their injuries.

Young players to keep an eye on are probably Tom Briscoe from Hull FC, Sam Tonkin from Wigan and Steven Lawrence from Huddersfield. But I really fancy Lee Smith from Leeds to set the international stage alight if he’s fit by then - his performance at OT last year was world class.

So many options but lets see who steps up to be counted.

Thats the problem, players show potential but then it seems to go missing between club level and international level!

Hopefully we will see a situation were there is a a lot more competition for positions rather than what we have now were too many positions pick themselves simply because nobody else is good enough.

Kirk Yeoman and Paul Sykes are probably two I can think of at the moment.



This will be hard IMO whilst the core of Long, Cunningham, Roby, Graham and several others are still at St Helens along with the same type at Leeds. The only half challengers for the top two this season are Wigan but we’ll soon see their true colours when they play Saints.

The challenge cup is probably either Leeds or Saints cup same with the elague leaders and the Grand Final.

If you can add one more team into that mix then your been too optimistic because all Saints have faced in the Challenge cup final are one hit wonderers whilst Leeds and Saints have contested the Grand final for the last two seasons and I can’t see this changing.