FORMER champion Great Britain rugby league star Ellery Hanley admits he can't envisage England surpassing Australia on the international stage in his lifetime. Link www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6396876786 Maybe with more English players going to the NRL this will change. Need some backs though, especially Half's and 5/8s even if they have to work their way into grade.

FORMER champion Great Britain rugby league star Ellery Hanley admits he can't envisage England surpassing Australia on the international stage in his lifetime. Link www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6396876786 Maybe with more English players going to the NRL this will change. Need some backs though, especially Half's and 5/8s even if they have to work their way into grade.

We need less teams in the league as a matter of urgency.

Rubbish we do not need less teams years ago and i know its faster now but years ago their was more teams and they used to work and play rugby we beat them loads of times so why do we need less teams

Move over Sherlock Holmes

Because as Daniel Anderson pointed out when mocking the mess SL has become since he left, there isn't the player pool to support 14 teams. In England the players playing the game at junior level are generally terrible athletes. They are the runts of society, the sons of council house dwellers. So the 'average' SL young player is a sparrow legged runt with average ability. Each club probably produces 3 or 4 reasonable players every 5 years.

They should cut SL to 10 teams.

Two leagues of 10, with P+R -one up, one down

have you ever talked to that suicide helpline in the uk? could help you out. but i would like to point out your talking poopie again, im sure the aussie school boys have been beaten by the english school boys a good few times over the years. the problem isn't the youths mate.

There's nothing wrong, they just have a better starting position in culture with the Aussie public. We're going in the right direction, trust me. I think we'll win something before 2020, i'm sure of it.

tell us something we don't know Ellery

Ex-Rugby League player in pointless limelight grabbing rant shocker.

Maybe Hanly should stop chelping to the Aussies and get involved in the game in this country to try and improve it?

He is making a play at Maccas job, its called the lowest common denominator theory.

We're going nowhere as long as the Wood is running the RFL. If he put half as much energy into his job as he does justifying himself every 5 minutes we might have something to show.

I don't tihnkwe're too far behind. In the 4N we comfortably beat NZ and we gave OZ real scare at Wembley and probably comfortably beaten in the final.

But lets look at the facts, we had a resonably young squad whereas the Aussie have had their back bone playing together for 6+ years. Thats not going to last forever that back bone will eventually split up. We have some superb young players coming through the system, Lomax, Clark, Bateman, Currie. We are having some exceptionally talented youngsters coming through the system who i believe can match it with Australia

Maybe because its the aussies number one sport and our tenth . The amount of money the NRL plows into the comp and development will make ours look like chicken feed. We will never be able to compete, not in my life time, and im in my twenties.

You clown so basically if you come from a council estate your a runt of society what a bell end you are , my son as played junior rugby since under 7s and been brought up on a council estate he is far from a runt of society , you would also be shocked to learn how many superleague stars past & present do actually come from a council estate

Cool, what the sport really needs is another high profile ex-player running it down in the media. Another from the Schofield school of all wind and no solutions.

Saddened you are indeed a sad idiot! There are lots of fine athletes who are 'the sons of council house dwellers'. Your comments are misguided, derogatory, and insulting to anyone living in or who has lived in a council house. If your comments were just meant to be a wind up, well done you got me. But if you really believe that tripe you spouted, I pity you.

Another way of looking at is that we have the player pool, but the players in it aren't good enough, so maybe what we should be doing is increasing the quality of the players we have rather than reducing their number.

A typical troll from Saddened

what an absolute mong you are

You need to get more Englishmen playing in the NRL. Especially young halves, ship them over and they’ll develop into better players in the Aussie RL system. It’s why NZ is competitive after all.

Hanley's annoyed some people because he's right. That's why we haven't produced a world class halfback in 20 years, and why we have centres who can't pass and a general culture in SL that losing by 30 points is in some way OK.