Unfortunately it is going to just be a lowering of standards. The Aussies have far more players at every level of the game so they have a much bigger pool of potential talent. In SL, I think most clubs actually do quite a lot in terms of junior development. It's an easy line to say clubs will be forced to do more to bring through young talent, but I'm not sure what more they will do.

We might find that semi decent but not that great young players, that in the past would not have been able to establish themselves as SL first team regulars and would end up in the NL, will now be more in demand by the clubs and will have a better bargaining position in terms of wages.

I think one problem in Britain with the quality of all sport is that most people's involvement in it only goes as far as the nearest X box or whatever the latest gadget is hence the lack of home grown improvement .
BTW i believe there is a BBC Inside Out programme on next Monday at 7 pm about or containing an article on rugby league & the state of the game.

Without wishing to derail this thread, the key to changing attitudes to regular season games might just lie in the perception of what makes a Champion team? Finishing top after 27 rounds has got to matter more IMO

Changing the playoffs only really affects incentives to a few clubs around the margins,

if you scrap the playoffs, then it makes every league game count for the top 2 or 3 clubs, but for the rest its much of a muchness, finish 4th or finish 7th does it really matter much?

if you make it a top 5, then it means the competition becomes more intense for the clubs from around 3 to 7, but doesn't really affect the top 2 or lower clubs

as a top 8, it really just makes the competition more intense for the clubs from around 6 to 10

in the days before SL came in everybody really knew Wigan were going to win the league so the league wasn't massively important for the other clubs either - back then there were a lot more cups so those were the more intense fixtures, but I think we have to be careful about getting nostalgic about the intensity of the competition when it was just decided off a league, we used to have crowds of 3000 or 4000 at Wilderspool even with greats like Boyd, Gregory and co in the team, with only the big derby games really getting the fans to turn up

Maybe the introduction of bonus points might be an incentive for clubs not to capitulate and like wise if you win by X margin you get a bonus point.

So the better/winning team plays expansive to try to get the extra point, and the lesser/losing team defends for their life to stay within X margin to not lose a point.

People go on about the LLS not meaning much so they can't argue that throwing in all these bonus points will alter/mutate league positions.

I disagree. Top 5 as a play-off system incentivises teams to finish as high as possible. It was clear last year that Smith was pretty in-different to whether we finished 1st or 2nd, as there's no real difference in your route in your route to the final; that wouldn't be the case with top 5, where there's a distinct advantage in each incremental place. That's why it's the only play-off system I think strikes the right balance with the league set-up. Top 8 leaves you with games like we had at Salford and London last year-I don't criticise Smith or the club for this, as they're playing the comp, but the organisers should try and eliminate this if possible, as it devalues SL IMHO.

Who would you consider the top 2 clubs to be then?

I'd reckon going back to the old top 5 play-off would give you a much more intense competition for spots and also a more intense play-off competition.

Warrington and Wigan but maybe next year it will be Warrington and Saints.
I don't think that Leeds would win the league, if the playoffs were scrapped. Leeds haven't been massively rotating their squad, they have just got into sticky ruts of form because they don't have a strong and consistent enough team at the moment to win consistently through a season.

I did think the top 5 was a better play off system, not because it was 5 teams necessarily but because it avoided the big weakness of both our system and the Aussie one: you end up with a 4 team knock out just like a cup competition, so the reward system being based on having a 'second chance' has the anomaly that you are allowed to lose a playoff game as long as its the first one (like us this year) whereas if you win that first playoff game you then forfeit your right to a second chance (like Saints this year or us in 2011). Quite a few teams in Aus have fallen foul of that over the years.

I would like to see a 10 team Super League with the top 5 playoffs. I think that would be quite a competitive competition.

I agree with the 10 team SL and 5 team PO with the league winner going straight through to the final. The only problem is 2 v 5 could be 10-12 pts difference but for team 2 if they lost they'd be out. No second chances. But it would still probably be an improvement on the current system.

10 teams, everyone plays each other three times meaning 27 games. 13 at home, 13 away and 1 magic weekend. Some teams you'll play home twice, others away twice.

But what about relegation/ promotion? Scrap it I guess but it would mean demoting the likes of Widnes (again), Castleford, Wakefield, London, Bradford or Salford? Seems harsh on those teams. But the likes of Bradford and Salford financially suffering, would a drop to 'Super League 2' be the final nail in the coffin?

An interesting thread this. Although some replies have been rather embarrassing - eg 'he's moaning because Saints aren't winning anything, blah blah blah'.

Whether the standard is any better/worse than 5/10/100 years ago is the wrong question to be asking if we want to improve the game. There's no reason to be stuck in the past and the fixation with it is probably part of the reason why the sport seems to be standing still.

What we, and Wilkin, should be writing/talking about is the future and how we can improve the sport by making it financially sound, making attendances rise etc which will make RL a successful sport. There is a lot of doom and gloom about currently (mostly coming from our 6 fingered friends in Wigan) and although we will not have the imports and we will lose a couple of high profile players to other leagues/sports, there is a basis to work from if we can get the governance and structure right.

Agreed - Wilkin moans all the time, the fact that Saints haven't won a trophy for years has got nothing to do with that.

Re your last para, which again I agree with, my point is that if Wilkin must drone on, it would be good to hear him say what, say, 3 things he would do to change the sport and make some of those things happen. I suspect he doesn't because one of the answers will be to reduce the number of clubs in SL which will put some members of League 13 out of work. When he becomes a FT mouth piece, he is even less likely to look at it objectively.

2 doesn't play 5 in week 1 of the old top 5 system. 2 plays 3, loser gets second chance against winner of 4 V. 5. This is definitely the fairest system, and the only one that adequately rewards league position, without creating any potentially silly situations for clubs that finished higher.

I've a (sighted crazy) theory that 5th is quite a good place to finish, and arguably better than 3rd or 4th. Whilst 4th can lose a game, it's only in week one, when they play a team 3 places higher. Whilst 5th are in 'sudden death' all the way, week 1 they're at home to a team from the bottom half of the table. Week 2, yes they have to play away, but only to the team that finished one place above them, that have got a hiding (usually) from the best team in the league the previous week, whilst they have momentum from a (usually comfortable) win. Faced with that, do people really see finishing 4th as better than 5th?

Whilst a 10 team comp would certainly be more competitive, it just feels too small a league to me-I'd compromise at 12, which also means you've gotta be able average to make the play-offs (5th out of 10 might still have lost more games than they've won). Plus I'd struggle with which 4 teams should go-that's over a quarter of current SL clubs you'd have to demote.

Unfortunately players are sometimes asked for their opinions on these things, and will give it. Wilkin has led calls for players to have more of a voice , and in some matters they should. However, I don't think they're best placed to make the calls needed to make the game stronger. That said, I'm not sure that the current administrators are either, and the governance structure of the sport is one aspect that is rarely debated, but is the root cause of the issue. Theoretically, let's say that it could be proven that a 10 team SL was the right way to go-at present you'd have to have a majority of SL clubs vote for it-turkeys and Christmas anyone?

I'm not saying this is easily solved, but looking at this would help more than getting Wilkin's ideas on what we should do differently.

Nailed it.

The point I'm making is that Wilkin doesn't offer any opinion, certainly not in the BBC article we're discussing. "Down with this sort of thing" "Something must be done" is the sum total of his input.

It's clear to me that the game cannot sustain 14 FT professional clubs. There isn't enough money in the game to do that. Market forces dictate it must contract or, alternatively, we need to get more money in. How do we do that? Increase crowds, TV deals and sponsorship. How do we do that? Bit of consistency with our international calendar, better TV scheduling, employ proper marketing people (to the extent we don't already, dunno). We had a debate on this board a few month's ago about increasing the salary cap to raise standards and keep players from leaving. Madness. Sam Tomkins is a jewel in the RL crown but if we can't afford to keep him as a sport then he should go.

All of the above may be absolute drivel. It doesn't matter, it's an opinion. The point is that Wilkin hasn't even bothered doing that and he keeps getting the chance to. He ought to seize it or bore off.

Standards in the British game are undoubtedly dropping and you'd need to be a fool to argue otherwise. The precipitous decline in the quality of backs just in the last decade in particular is frightening. The (probably) best halfback in the game is pushing into his mid 30s and wasn't good enough to play for a top team 10 years ago. The biggest club in the game is being forced to rely on Smith and Green, the very definition of average journeymen, to move them around the park for the next few years as there is simply noone any better available. You'll be stuck relying on Myler to do the same soon for the same reason. We, a top 2 trophy-challenging side next year most likely, will be relying on a mixture of raw, unproven teenage kids and well past-their-best veterans in our backline and we'll still probably be better off there than all but a couple of other teams. How many top sides continue to be forced to field SRs as centres because there are no quality centres available?

The only thing that's really changed is that we don't have Aussies and Kiwis over here masking the problem.

Ignoring the larger problems of the game, I'm quite happy to be relying on Myler, who will be England's first choice half back within a couple of years

The only thing that's changed is that 10-15 years ago England had Long, Martyn, Sculthorpe, Farrell, Harris, Deacon, Smith, Goulding (just about) and Briers to choose from (among others). Now, as you say, they're looking to the future with Myler... The defence rests your honour...

Funny how people look back at the 'good ol' days' through rose tinted specs. I seem to recall half backs especially being GB/England's perennial problem.

Long, for all his quality, only had one good game for GB, then got drunk and chucked off the tour, Martyn was a steady-Eddie type of half at best, Scully and Faz might have been World Class but were back rowers (til Farrell got too old), Harris spent his best years playing Union, Deacon could only play behind a dominant pack (and even then was at his best kicking), Smith-you're joking now right? Goulding hardly played in SL, and the fact a Saints fan is trotting out Briers in an assessment on the strength of home-grown half-backs made me choke on me chip butty.

The fact you, like GB coaches in the past, had to include Scully and Faz in that list proves my point-they were played in the halves as we had nowt else. Wigan's current situation sums it up perfectly-they had two quality. overseas halves; they now have Smith and Green, as the cap doesn't allow any quality imports to cover. This is not a new problem-it's just that it's more visible now that the previously solution isn't available.

But Northampton Saint's point still stands - those guys are all better than their equivalents today.

The game has regressed. The best players today are mainly guys towards the end of their careers, Briers, Sinfield, Burrow and co.

The only real star quality in the English game today is Sam Tomkins who is probably going to go to union soon anyway, like Eastmond who was the other one with that potential.

You get a similar argument to this in football, you can say look at England strikers today compared to what we had a few years back with Shearer, Sheringham, Fowler, Cole, Ferdinand, Wright etc, and say "well those guys never won anything at international level"....yep, but they were a million times closer than Darren Bent and co today...

I think across a number of sports, England has regressed. The one where it hasn't is cricket, but there I don't think the current crop of England players are any more talented than what we had fifteen years or so ago, the difference is England has the most professional set up in the world now. Which is the same as England RU had a decade ago when they were world champions basically with not much more than a hard working grinding pack and Wilkinson's boot. So maybe the quality and professionalism of set up has more impact than we think.

What is interesting about this, is that when some very average overseas players or players looking for a final payday were flooding the game, everyone (quite rightly) squealed about our young, homegrown players being denied an opportunity, we'd never beat the aussies etc. ........... and now, the influx of overseas players has dried up, who is going to fill the gap?

I'd like to think it will signal a new generation of homegrown talent but since the RL and the clubs don't seem to be able to agree a sustained, cohesive youth development strategy I won't hold my breath.

I would say, however, this isn't unique to RL. The Premier league in football isn't short of cash but there's a dearth of decent English players at the moment, has been for years and no sign of an improvement.

What was the sustained cohesive youth development strategy in the 80s that brought through players like Hanley, Schofield, Edwards, Gregory. Can we learn from that?

Absolutely superb point.

The really funny* part is that, if that is happening now and younger players get their chance (remember, we've signed no-one this season, all our recruitment is promoting youth) then those same players see their path to the international team blocked by....Australians and New Zealanders.

*and by funny I mean, not at all.

Everyone continues to miss the real problem, and the real reason why our talent streams are rapidly drying up and have been for the last decade, namely the continued monstrous rise of football. Most of the best young RL talent out there is now locked away in the academy setups of Premier league football clubs, never to be seen on a professional RL pitch. And, for all the incredible flaws and incompetencies of the game's governing body, there's unfortunately the square root of jack anyone can really do about this. The days when it was a sensible career decision for an athletically talented 15/16/17 year old to opt for Saints' or Wigan's youth team instead of Liverpool's or Manu. Utd's are gone forever (or at least until football's ultimately financially unsustainable bubble finally bursts anyway). As long as kids can earn more money playing for a League Two team than they can at elite RL clubs then not a lot is going to change unfortunately.