Nice to see how little Andrew Johns actually thinks of Super league.
Just read an article where he's advised Cameron Smith to move to super league at the ripe age of 37. He's said Super league would be perfect for him at this stage of his career, and could play another 2-3 years over here and could play with a cigarette in his mouth.
Now i may have taken his comments the wrong way and he's trying to point out how good Cameron Smith is, or was, as he's not the player he used to be. But i read that as super league is a sub standard league where even though he's closing in on 40 and isn't as good as he used to be, he can't carry on in the NRL but come over and smash it over here.
For me this just points out how below the NRL aussies still think we are.
Interested to see if other people have read it and take it a different way to how i perceive it.
I just take it as disrespectful from a player i admire.

Talking about John's there is a great piece by Paul Cullen on his signing back in '05. Christ 15 years ago! It's on the Sports app on SkyQ.

I remember that day like it was a few weeks ago, remember the floor feeling like it was bowing when we were jumping after we scored a try

I don't get upset about comments like this. Their league IS superior to ours. It gets more attention from their media too. Just as it is the reverse with football. The Aussies were drooling over the likes of Emile Heskey and Dwight Yorke going over there when they were past their "best before date" over here.

I don't see the issue with what Johns is saying.

The difference between Super League and the NRL is blindingly obvious. It's like comparing the English football premier league and the Scottish premier league - Massive gulf in quality.

If Cameron Smith brought his present quality to our league, he would absolutely nail it. Any SL club signing him would get obvious criticism for his age, but I have little doubt he would be worth any outlay - with a half decent side around him he would get them a SL title, barring any major injuries.. in fact, I'd actually swap one of our present marquee salary players for him in a heartbeat.

Johns is correct in that NRL is far superior to SL. Smith coming over here is all hypothetical, but who knows, after all we've signed GI. The comment about playing with a ciggy in his mouth is a bit of a daft way of emphasising a point, and now I cannot get the image of Chizzy with a cigar in mouth holding up the challenge cup at Wembley, out of my mind.

ha ha ha ha it's in my head now aswell

This comment is just a bit of harmless mickey-taking, Johns is also projecting about himself here though as I very much doubt Cameron Smith has ever smoked cigs...if he came to SL he'd be the model pro, a role model to his team mates and would be fantastic for the image of the sport as he's intelligent and humble with the media. You can see why the idea of tearing up the Poms with a cig in his mouth appeals to Johns though as he is more that kind of personality. I wouldn't hold this comment against Johns but over the years I've grown used to being disappointed by him. He was a fantastic player but he's a flawed person. The Inglis thing was what really put me off him. I can still respect him as a player and I'm glad Warrington signed him and we got to see him on the field in our jersey but sometimes you get a window in to what your heroes are really like and the sheen comes off. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/ ... reg-inglis

This comment is just a bit of harmless mickey-taking, Johns is also projecting about himself here though as I very much doubt Cameron Smith has ever smoked cigs...if he came to SL he'd be the model pro, a role model to his team mates and would be fantastic for the image of the sport as he's intelligent and humble with the media. You can see why the idea of tearing up the Poms with a cig in his mouth appeals to Johns though as he is more that kind of personality. I wouldn't hold this comment against Johns but over the years I've grown used to being disappointed by him. He was a fantastic player but he's a flawed person. The Inglis thing was what really put me off him. I can still respect him as a player and I'm glad Warrington signed him and we got to see him on the field in our jersey but sometimes you get a window in to what your heroes are really like and the sheen comes off. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/ ... reg-inglis

wow i've never read that before, genuinely didn't think he was the type to ever say anything like that.

Much of it tongue in cheek.
The basis of what he saying is right. We were getting Johns late in his career. Not the debut, but he was to play 12 month with Newcastle and return to Wire for a 2 year deal that would have seen him at Wire around 37 too, but we all know what happened.

However there’s nothing wrong with a 37 year old plus. Some players are legendary are playing late in there careers because the are professional in approach to their self discipline, and that is what elevates their game.
I’d have had Steve Menzies at Wire at 40, no problem.

True but those players are rare.

There are a lot of players who won't deliver value on the final contract of their career because they can negotiate a good wage off their reputation but are in decline. The decline kicks in at different times with different players and isn't always just to do with their professionalism: some great pros like Mike Gregory, Iestyn Harris, were in decline in their late 20s. Injuries, miles on the clock from playing lots of games early, also has to be factored in.

The decline curve is part of the "moneyball" data analysis which started off in baseball. In a stats-rich sport like baseball where they have so much data over so many years they've been able to model peak and decline curves and found that most players fit into a few general curves: early peakers, late bloomers, rapid decliners, evergreen stars. The moneyballers started to work out which path players were on and that kind of analysis can be great if you get it right. I remember one concept that came up when I was reading about this was that at the end of players' careers many have the 'cliff edge' which is where they have a rapid fall off from their season before and realise that physically they are past it. You don't want to be stuck with a player with a couple of years left on a contract when he's hit the cliff edge. With us, we saw the signs in Morley's last season, but then when he went to Salford he just wasn't the same, we timed that perfectly. Souths timed getting rid of Asotasi perfectly because he hit the cliff edge in his first year with us and we were stuck with a big contract.

That kind of analysis is getting big in football now but I'm not sure how much it is used in RL yet. Sam Allardyce at Bolton used it and picked up a lot of guys (notably Gary Speed) who other clubs assumed were past it but were at or close to their peak well in to their 30s. Also Liverpool getting rid of Torres to Chelsea was driven by data metrics as they'd picked up something like "percentage of runs of 8 yards or more where a player reaches speed X" which they saw was an early indicator of a striker losing effectiveness and saw Torres had plummeted in his last half season when Dalglish was there, so they looked to offload him at maximum value before his decline became apparent. They blew the money on Andy Carroll though who was never fit after that, which shows the analytics won't always get it right...

Quote ="sally cinnamon"This comment is just a bit of harmless mickey-taking, Johns is also projecting about himself here though as I very much doubt Cameron Smith has ever smoked cigs...if he came to SL he'd be the model pro, a role model to his team mates and would be fantastic for the image of the sport as he's intelligent and humble with the media. You can see why the idea of tearing up the Poms with a cig in his mouth appeals to Johns though as he is more that kind of personality. I wouldn't hold this comment against Johns but over the years I've grown used to being disappointed by him. He was a fantastic player but he's a flawed person. The Inglis thing was what really put me off him. I can still respect him as a player and I'm glad Warrington signed him and we got to see him on the field in our jersey but sometimes you get a window in to what your heroes are really like and the sheen comes off. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/ ... reg-inglis'" Aus is a bit like the US in some respects. It is relatively isolated geographically in terms of borders, and isn't close enough to other nations to get a bit of a culture mix like we are used to in Europe. Within the country itself there are lots of races / ethnicities etc but from my time there I don't recall seeing anywhere near as much inter-racial relationships or even social mixing when compared to Europe. I think the current generation of people Johns' age have probably grown up with casual racism, whereas for forty-somethings in the UK we've been reflecting on the issues a lot longer. Hopefully it will get stamped out, although the far-right does seem to be getting a bit of a hold again.

Quote ="sally cinnamon"This comment is just a bit of harmless mickey-taking, Johns is also projecting about himself here though as I very much doubt Cameron Smith has ever smoked cigs...if he came to SL he'd be the model pro, a role model to his team mates and would be fantastic for the image of the sport as he's intelligent and humble with the media. You can see why the idea of tearing up the Poms with a cig in his mouth appeals to Johns though as he is more that kind of personality. I wouldn't hold this comment against Johns but over the years I've grown used to being disappointed by him. He was a fantastic player but he's a flawed person. The Inglis thing was what really put me off him. I can still respect him as a player and I'm glad Warrington signed him and we got to see him on the field in our jersey but sometimes you get a window in to what your heroes are really like and the sheen comes off. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/ ... reg-inglis'" Aus is a bit like the US in some respects. It is relatively isolated geographically in terms of borders, and isn't close enough to other nations to get a bit of a culture mix like we are used to in Europe. Within the country itself there are lots of races / ethnicities etc but from my time there I don't recall seeing anywhere near as much inter-racial relationships or even social mixing when compared to Europe. I think the current generation of people Johns' age have probably grown up with casual racism, whereas for forty-somethings in the UK we've been reflecting on the issues a lot longer. Hopefully it will get stamped out, although the far-right does seem to be getting a bit of a hold again.

That’s very good stuff. The data doesn’t lie

They’ve called us Poms and Limies for decades if not longer.

I didn't know Andrew Johns was a racist. There must be something we can burn/take down to protest about that?

The few times we've been to Perth ,there doesn't seem to be any ethnic barriers to socialising & the work ethic for immigrants seems to make them highly desired by the Government. It seems to be still a place of great opportunity for people with the right ideas & the nouse to get started & make money. A relative of ours lives & works over in Perth & although his actual job has changed over his 10 years there he manages to chase what work there is on a self employed basis. The main ethnicity issues seem to be to do with Aboriginals & where they fit into the attitudes of some dyed in the wool non-Abo Aussies.

Johns is absolutely right. What’s the problem?