Steve McNamara is now ensconced at Sydney Roosters. He is still the England coach. But he only has 9 members of an England squad to keep a close eye on. If he is to be a hands on coach, and England is to have a series of internationals to play during each year to keep it up to a high standard, then the coach needs a larger squad Down Under.

So far we have:

[iSam Tomkins

Jack Reed

Gareth Widdop

Sam Burgess

James Graham, George Burgess, Tom Burgess, Luke Burgess, Lee Mossop[/i


To make a run on team of 17 you need at least a squad of 22-24 to choose from.

Which players would you like to see go Down Under to make up the 22-24 man squad?

Here are my choices:

=#FF0000Ryan Hall, Josh Charnley, Tom Lineham

Kallum Watkins, Zak Hardaker,

Richard Myler, Johnny Lomax,

Sean O'Loughlin,
Steve Ferres, Ben Westwood, Liam Farrell,

Michael McIlorum, Micky Higham, Rob Burrow,


Then the England contingent would be:

[iSam Tomkins

Ryan Hall, Josh Charnley, Tom Lineham,
Jack Reed, Kallum Watkins, Zak Hardaker

Gareth Widdop
Richard Myler, Johnny Lomax,

Sean O'Loughlin,
Steve Ferres, Ben Westwood, Sam Burgess, Liam Farrell

James Graham, George Burgess, Tom Burgess, Luke Burgess, Lee Mossop

Michael McIlorum, Micky Higham, Rob Burrow,[/i


With that squad permanently resident Down Under you could play an England vs New Zealand series in Auckland's Eden Park Stadium on three nights just prior to State or Origin.

The England vs New Zealand match could start at 8pm Auckland time = 6pm Sydney time = 9am UK time. With a live telecast it would finish at 7.45 pm Sydney time, leaving a 30 minute period for introduction of State of Origin, which would kick off at 8.15pm (as it does now) and finish at 10pm.

These would become the biggest rugby league nights of the year in Australia and New Zealand.

Not keen on Steve Ferres in the back row.

As long as State of Origin is played as a curtain raiser to the Test series, I'm game for that.

I realy dont know why you post such drivell on here? you are the self appointed expert on all things antipodean you should know that the Aussie clubs will not want anything to do with a game that is not Australian & will do everthing in thier power to scupper it! A proper break around origin to allow NZ GB & the pacific teams to have a meaningfull game anywhere they want with players from all over the world would be great for the game, but the greedy NRL clubs want it all ways, origin mid week & their club games on the weekend. It would not matter how many players GB qualified played in the NRL the clubs would not let them play.

Wtf is Steve Ferres?!

Actually on a more serious note, the NRL have set aside an entire weekend for representative matches to take place. This includes the ANZAC match, City v Country, and Samoa v Fiji (the winner of which will take part in next year's Four Nations.)

Nothing to stop England playing a match on the other side of the globe against, say, Papua New Guinea, Tonga or the Cook Islands.

In fact the only thing that would stop that happening would be the Super League clubs not releasing their international players.

I'm not particularly keen on one-off international games. I don't think they do much to develop international RL. Plus if we wanted then why fly all the way across the world? Might as well play France or Wales.
What we need is a proper 3 week mid-season window. Either the clubs can stop playing altogether or continue, I don't care either way as long as they release their players. If they don't, fine them and take 2 competition points off them.

I. The game does not want an England side made up almost entirely of players from the NRL. We need to do more to keep players in the UK and France and strengthen the super league no weaken it. If McNamara is in Australia then he must quit the England job.

If we can 10 in at each club, the kiwis does the same and the islanders get 5 in. We then fund the afl in nsw and qld we'll soon be able to beat them.

Brett Ferres's more talented identical twin brother.

Don't worry, he has no interest in Greek.

Wouldn't it be easier to have a coach based in England?

Even better if we had the mainstays of our team based here.

Why would it? You can't possibly say that Sam Burgess would be the same player if he would have opted to stay at bradford? The nrl as Defo made him a better player

Don't be ridiculous. Burgess has natural talent and would have been the same player over here.

Are you Gary Schofield?

I think the objective is to make superleague a lot stronger to encourage more supporters in our game and to attract bigger money sponsors and improve media presence.
We ain,t going to do that by letting most of your better players compete 12000 miles away, all thats going to do is improve the TV viewing for the NRL.
Its OK for players to go overseas to improve our international game but the balance is the bread + butter of Superleague and the Championship to keep the majority of clubs financially viable.
Clubs will start to lose professional status if all your best players find there career elsewhere down under, who wants to support an "A team" in superleague.

I understand he is naturally gifted but he is better tested in oz as the standards are better then SL the same for the other lads going out there.

What about BRITISHMEN???

Which raises the question, how do we raise the standard of superleague before it becomes a forgotten sport by the media and sponsors.
What could be a wake up call is when most of our best players play in OZ, then they change the format of the Club Championship to the top 4 teams............another total massacre as per the prevous experiment.

Another way of raising the standard of Super League, in an era of player migration from SL to the NRL, is by developing the game in France, by admitting Toulouse in to Super League. This would create a whole new pool of young talent, some of which would be taken up by Toulouse, and some of which could be recruited into English SL teams, as we have seen with Theo Fages at Salford.

It's about developing the English team not the French we ate behind the Aussies in means of ability & development but the French are a country mile off the English lads. Our game needs to bring our own nation on not every other country.

I presume part of McBanana's mission whilst down under, will be to recruit as many English heritage players as he can find.