Don't disagree with you, it matters not where they come from. I was giving my thoughts on PA's comments in respect of striving towards an all locally born side. It's just a utopian ideal and not feasible, but it doesn't mean that we should not make every effort to nurture any potential talent on our doorstep. Difficulty is, and this applies to the rest of the RL world, there's a lot of sports and other pastimes to compete with. There are very few genuinely talented players left in the game now, which is making the sport far less interesting.

I completely agree, but wasn't it always the same in the past? When Sean Long was coming through (for example) there was pro RU, Premiership football, central contract cricket, pro golf, pro athletics and lots of pastimes.

I think the problems in our game are that

1. The top home grown talent now seems to head to the NRL, depleting our domestic game.

2. The development of youngsters seems to focus on physique and power at the expense of guile and skill. Big, athletic and powerful lads at second row, prop are ten-a-penny but how many Longs, Maguires, Robys or Clarks do you see? The relegation of the loose forward in the modern game to that of a 3rd prop only serves to illustrate the point. But this is not the fault of the clubs but of the nature of the modern game. Robots bashing robots for 20 minutes before a fresh robot is brought on meaning more robots are needed than any other position.

Fair points, and taking Sean Long as an example, he very likely played RL due to his father's involvement in the sport. If he hadn't have made a career in RL, then it would most likely have been in another sport. We need, somehow, to make the sport of more interest to the youngsters who currently have no interest in the game, to widen the search for talent.

Couldn't agree more that first and foremost were looking for athletic, powerful and quick players for all positions. How we have managed to lose the guile, clever and cunning handling of the half backs, hookers and loose forwards in this era baffles me. Lee Briers is involved in the coaching side of the game, and there must be many others of his ilk, so why does it appear that his skill set isn't being passed on? At wembley we were shocking at passing out of dummy half, which is absolute basic handling. With Catalans successfully winning the cup due to being best at robots bashing robots, the future looks like more of the same, sadly.

Re Briers....it was.
Briers can be clearly heared saying to our players as they prepared to exit the tunnel...
"Relax lads and enjoy the game"!
The biggest load of bollox he has ever issued....

When he ought to be saying.
""Get out there, and rip into them."!!!

The one area that Morgan Smith was obviously strong was his passing from dummy half.

I am baffled by this. Passes to 1 foot or more above first receivers head, denies the first receiver the time needed to do anything plus the chance of error.

I would have thought this was the sort of thing that could be nailed in training, surely? It's not a recent thing either.

...nailed when you are a junior?

This shoddy first play and the fact that it's game after game is really unforgivable

What I don't get is how in England it's always presented as a binary choice: either an athlete with limited skill or a creative genius who lacks physical attributes. The Aussies creative players have superb physical attributes as well! Andrew Johns was built like a loose forward and could king hit people in the tackle. He played hooker at international level for a while and was a tackle machine. And yet he had the complete passing and kicking game. Look also at the strength and speed of Thurston, Cronk, Cameron Munster. These guys have bags of talent but they are superb athletes and physically they aren't lacking against anyone.

Also if you watch the NRL you see amazing feats from their outside backs, unlikely catches to keep the ball in the field of play, one handed offloads and blind passes at full pace, kicks in to space on the run. Their outside backs are built like tanks and incredibly fast but they seem to have these freakish ball handling skills as well.